Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Riding the Dolphin

I’ve mentioned the Green Dolphin shirt here before, but I’d almost prefer if you didn’t remember it - that would suggest you’re paying too much attention, and I can’t take that kind of pressure.  In any case the GD is one of my key T’s, one so steeped in personal history that I’d keep it in my textile archives even if I could no longer pull it over my swollen pointy head.  I got it at a steep discount 25 years ago or so; it’s got three two (corrected per actual reality) stylized cetaceans swimming nose-to-fluke in a circle on the front, which I enhanced by dabbing a little gold glitter paint on their eyeholes, and some years later I accidentally stained the back with tar at an Ojai creekbed after a Krishnamurti lecture.  Almost since I first got it, I’ve considered it a “power shirt”: though it has faded and shrunk out of shape, I always feel better when I put it on - stronger, fitter, more charismatic.  The Green Dolphin shirt has done right by me.  In appreciation of that record, I’ve kept it in the “current rotation” drawer for a quarter of a century.

However, for most of that time, it has remained deep down within that drawer.  There just haven’t been too many occasions in quite a while for me to wear it.  During those years, inexplicably, the shirt somehow changed shape.  The neck stretched wider and wider, perhaps to accommodate my increasingly herculean shoulders; at the same time, the length of the shirt sort of shortened, until it barely reaches my omphalos.  Now when I put it on, the sleeves terminate at the upper reaches of my biceps, and it fails to cover the entirely of my midsection, terminating at a point slightly north of my waistband.  It’s really only suitable anymore for exercise or raves, and let’s face it, it’s been some time since I raved. 

On an unseasonably warm afternoon not too long ago, I was vouchsafed time enough for a run to and through the park and back.  But I felt a little low on energy, and my failure to launder had left me short of exercise clothes.  Lucky for me, that let the GDT rise back up to the top of the t-shirt drawer.  As soon as I slipped it on, my low energy level started surging.  With minimal warm-up and stretching I was out the door, earbuds blasting and my stretched-out t-shirt switching lightly over my body with every manly pavement-eating strike I took.

Out the door, down the stairs, into the glare of the afternoon and across the street to the greenbelt, then a left toward the park.  The first full block was an uphill rise, not steep but significant, so that by the time I reached Balboa street my metabolism had kicked in to match the attitude engendered by my shirt: powerful, self-assured, maybe not fast but clearly unstoppable.  I was a force of nature in that shirt.  My knees rose high, my quads and calves clenched and relaxed with rhythmic confidence.  I was feeling good - and better by the step.  I was riding the Green Dolphins again and there was no holding us back. 

Halfway up the next block a knot of people had congregated by some parked cars.  They seemed to be in their 20s, about ten or twelve freshfaced, good-looking young men and women gearing up for an outing of some sort.  They were chatting amiably; the guys perfunctorily tossed some footballs and frisbees around.  Coolers rested near them on the curb and there was a general air of festivity.  Good for them, I thought as I hauled ass past them, my lungs working like a bellows and my shoulders bulging fiercely under the paper-thin fabric of the t-shirt.  Fun for all.  It’s all good. 

As these thoughts drifted through my mind between the guitar licks and drumbeats of my running mix, I imagined I saw something but I couldn’t be sure.  Were the pretty young people actually sneaking peeks of me as I ran past them?  Had I broken their focus on their own socializing?  I felt as if the guys scoped me from the corners of their eyes, assessing me - my stride and my strength, my potential threat level.  And at the same time, were the women flicking glances at me too, assessing me in their own way, marveling at my manliness as it blasted out through the dolphins on my skimpy T?  That’s right, ladies.  I’m running in my Green Dolphin shirt.  Maybe I’ll catch you later.  I’ve got places to go right now.

I arrived at the park shortly thereafter and did my backroad run.  On those wooded paths I was alone with my thoughts, my tunes, and my t-shirt, running fast, leaping over logs and ruts, getting stronger the longer I went.  I looped back along the boulevard to where I’d started, then up through the rose garden, out to the street and back towards home again - back, as it turned out, past that same little crowd of pretty people, now seemingly at the final phases of packing their cars, finishing their smokes, picking with whom they’d ride and where they’d sit… and here I came again, now with a mature stride, my arms pumping efficiently, my lungs heaving deep and clear, perspiration pasting my well-worn shirt to my bulging pectorals.  Again, I got the double check-out - the guys wondering if they could take me, and the girls wondering where I might take them.... I blew past them all with a smirk and let them feast their eyes on my muscular rear aspect and the ambiguous tar-stain on my left shoulderblade.  Have fun without me, folks.  I’m having plenty of fun without you.

I owned the street; my every movement declared it.  The Green Dolphin t-shirt had made me powerful - feared by men, desired by women.  It had carried me through the rigors of the trail in record time.  During my cool-down walk up my block and down again, I noted how intimately it conformed to my physiognomy, almost a second skin but more complimentary.  Its gold-flecked dolphin eyes winked at me in the afternoon sunlight.  I winked back.

My breathing normalizing and perspiration streaming from my forehead, I made my way up my stairs to my front door, tingling with dolphin-tinged afterglow.  Just inside the door was Kelly, puttering with some domestic undertaking.  She turned to greet me, paused briefly, and then broke into peals of laughter.  “That?  You went outside - wearing THAT?  She seemed hilariously incapable of further comment, pointing wordlessly through her giggles to my beloved t-shirt. 

“Yeah, I did,” I replied sullenly, heading back for a shower.  One of us had clearly missed the point.  I hoped it was her but I can’t be sure anymore.  Either way, the shirt stays in the drawer till next time.