In ninth grade all the cool kids wore T-shirts with logos, cartoon characters, or funny sayings. My only tee was a mustard-yellow PE shirt with my last name written in Sharpie under the silk-screened mascot.
I told my mother I needed new shirts, and, looking for an inexpensive way to appease my request, she took me to Kmart. While she headed off with my baby sister to find cleaning supplies and diapers, I made a beeline to the T-shirts and spread my top choices across a stack of corduroys: “Frankie Say Relax” and “Have a Coke and a Smile.”
By the time Mom came over to see my selections, my sister was crying, and Mom looked flustered. “Come on, Suzanne,” she said. “We’ll come back and figure out this T-shirt thing another time.” She didn’t even look at my picks.
For my birthday the following week she gave me a lemon-yellow T-shirt with a rainbow graphic that said, “Smile, God loves you,” and another that declared in black lettering, “I’ve got what it takes, but nobody wants it.”
I didn’t fully appreciate the insanity of giving your daughter such a slogan to wear across her developing chest, even after I got many inappropriate comments while wearing it. Eventually it became a nightshirt.
That fall my father had a work trip, and I begged him to get me a T-shirt while he was away. He returned with a bright-red tee from a barbecue joint down the street from his hotel. Apparently he, too, failed to understand the impact a T-shirt slogan might have on the teenager wearing it: “Munch on my ribs.”
Suzanne Weerts
Burbank, California
When my crush from the University of Texas sailing club knocked on my door that rainy Saturday afternoon, I answered it barefoot, braless, and wearing a T-shirt so thin it was see-through.
I’d never been one to wear anything too revealing, but something felt different that day. Maybe it was the gentle rain outside my open windows. Maybe it was the rhythmic intensity of “Beck’s Bolero,” which I’d been playing repeatedly. Maybe it was Rob: tall, slim, muscular, tanned, smart. Or maybe I was just feeling sexy.
He didn’t gawk or comment about my breasts, but he was impressed to discover that I listened to Jeff Beck. After that he picked me up every Friday night in his old VW van and drove us to Lake Travis, just outside Austin. He parked it by the dock, where the university kept a small fleet of sailboats that any member of the sailing club could use. Often Rob and I sailed and swam naked under the moonlight, then slept in his van. In the colder months we would build a campfire, cook out, and snuggle. That summer was the most carefree of my life.
Somehow the way I opened my door that Saturday afternoon set the tone for our relationship: he’d never had a girlfriend who walked around in a see-through T-shirt, and I’d never had a boyfriend I’d swim naked with.
Betheny Reid
Dallas, Texas
Twenty-seven dollars for a faded, poorly sewn tee with holes along the collar was ridiculous; I knew that. But we were in California at a thrifting hot spot I’d found on Instagram, and the price was cheap for Orange County. Whoever had owned the shirt before had worn it in perfectly. I imagined how it would feel against my skin.
“You want that?” my husband asked when he saw me looking at it.
I gave a sheepish grin.
At the counter the tattooed cashier said, “You beat me to it. I almost bought this myself.”
“See?” I said to my husband. “It’s perfect.”
He rolled his eyes and handed over his credit card.
No sharing,” the cashier said as she handed me the bag.
My husband scoffed and said I didn’t have to worry about that.
Within a year our marriage had started to fall apart. Somewhere along the way the T-shirt had become my husband’s favorite, even though I no longer was. During our divorce, I asked for the shirt back. When he said he’d have to look for it, I knew I’d never wear it again.
After one of his first weekends with our kids, he dropped them off at my place. He was wearing the shirt, which was paint-stained and wrinkled. I wanted to loop my finger through the tear at the collar and tug.
Alex Tobalin
Chicago, Illinois
In the summer of 1986 my daughters and I spent a month traveling cross-country. I drove a rusted Dodge van that belonged to my then-boyfriend. The odometer read 150,000-some miles, but we experienced only two breakdowns. We saw gorgeous mountains and waterfalls and went camping and hiking in Mammoth Cave, Crater Lake, Yosemite, and other national parks. As a single parent who’d just finished graduate school, I had very little money, but I agreed to buy my girls each a T-shirt from a park of their choice: Megan chose Yellowstone; Erin, Glacier.
In 1990 we drove cross-country again, adding a number of other parks to our route, and a number of other shirts to our collection. Those tees are now sewn into a log-cabin quilt, along with many more I just had to buy from the parks we visited—not knowing that years later I’d be stitching them together to stay close to the memories they held. The quilt—and the memories—warm me now in spring, fall, and winter. My granddaughter, Denali, is already picking her favorite parks she’s visited.
Dianea Kohl
Ithaca, New York
Every weeknight my dad came home from work and shed his sport coat and button-up shirt. I always wished he would keep them on. When he wore them, he was in professional mode and a good, kind father. As soon as they came off, Scotch and Kahlúa became his personality. Stripped down to his white V-neck with the visible underarm stains, he’d argue with my mom or my older brother. I flinched with each piercing word.
After my father passed away from liver failure last year, we went through his things to decide what to donate. There were two piles of sweat-stained V-necks that still smelled of laundry detergent and alcohol and a hint of his cologne. It made me sad and angry, and I wanted to burn them to ash.
In the back of the closet, however, was a small stack of pristine, never-worn T-shirts. I presumed he’d planned to bring them out when the others became too smelly and stained. I took the new shirts home, and I wear one every weekend to signify what’s possible.
M.C.
Bend, Oregon
When my wife, Peggy, and I moved from Wyoming to Peru in 1982, we brought a stack of T-shirts we’d collected from running 5K and 10K races. Their colorful designs drew a lot of attention as we traveled around South America. People often asked about them, which was a good way to start conversations.
We’d been there a few months when we entered a race called El Gran Maraton, sponsored by a Peruvian airline. Though it was called a marathon, it was only eleven miles. At the starting line a concerned official stopped Peggy and her friend Ruth. Women, along with men over forty-five, were supposed to run a shorter, four-mile race. Peggy and Ruth said they wanted to run the long one. This had never happened before, but the official consulted others and finally said it was OK.
After the race was over, the airline awarded Peggy and Ruth tickets to fly anywhere in Peru, since they were the first women to run the eleven miles. We’d been talking about visiting the Amazon, so we flew to Iquitos. One day our guide took us to a Yagua village, where women stood behind small tables covered in wood carvings, necklaces made from jungle seeds, and hammocks woven from plant fibers. We’d been warned that money didn’t mean much to them, but we could offer them something in trade.
One woman urged us to pick items up. As Peggy selected a necklace, I pulled out a race T-shirt to show to the woman. She studied the shirt, then nodded. Other women came over. I pulled out more shirts, and they laughed and took them, inviting us to their tables. We left with souvenirs and a smile at the thought of the Yagua people wearing T-shirts from Wyoming.
Steve Gardiner
Shakopee, Minnesota
My sister Gina had large breasts and enjoyed showing them off with tight-fitting clothes. If you had an asset, she thought, you should put it out there for all to see.
At thirty-seven she was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a nurse she understood what lay ahead but, forever the optimist, she took it as yet another life challenge. After she and her doctor discussed her mastectomy and breast reconstruction, she told me she’d asked the doctor about increasing her breast size . . . just a bit. “Why not make the most of these new ones?” she said. We both laughed.
Gina continued to take care of her body for the next ten years. Then, during COVID, the cancer returned. But so did her optimism. She exercised, ate well, took countless rounds of chemotherapy, held her head high, stuck out her chest, and walked with a sense of purpose, even though her diagnosis was terminal.
Gina fought for three more years. After she passed, family and friends came together to participate in the breast-cancer-benefit walk that Gina had done every year. Everyone wore T-shirts memorializing Gina with a line from her favorite Bob Marley song: “Every little thing’s gonna be all right.”
Before the walk I opened the box of shirts and distributed them to our group. As everyone wriggled into them, it became obvious that I’d ordered them a size too small, maybe two. The shirts accentuated pretty much everything, our chests included. I couldn’t help but think Gina was smiling, encouraging us to strut our stuff with confidence.
Teresa Yatsko
Ithaca, New York
In the summer of 1992 I found a teal-and-turquoise T-shirt on the street that said: “Project RAFT, Russians and Americans for Teamwork.” I picked it up and took it with me to Nepal four months later.
When it eventually came time to extend my tourist visa, I started talking with a woman in line next to me at the government office. She said she lived in Montana in the summertime and guided raft trips. I told her my friend Rachel did that too. Come to find out, they were dear friends. The woman invited me to join her on a raft trip down the Sunkoshi River while we were in Nepal.
I wore my Project RAFT T-shirt, and as I was putting on my life jacket at the river’s edge, a couple of other rafters asked where I’d gotten it, looking noticeably stunned. I told them how I’d found it on the street in California.
It turned out I’d joined a reunion trip of Russians and Americans, all of whom had met some five years earlier as part of Project RAFT.
Matt Buckmaster.
Santa Barbara, California
A few days before the one-year anniversary of our son Caleb’s death, my husband said he felt like we were at a turning point: “If we keep going on the road we’re on, it may keep us from living again.” The loss of our child would always weigh heavily on us, he said, but we needed to try.
We held a letting-go ceremony at the cemetery, reading aloud letters we’d written to Caleb. I told our son I still wanted to feel his presence, but I no longer wanted to feel so sad about his absence, and that the decision to stop grieving was not a decision to stop loving. “I will always be holding you,” I said. “You will forever be the child of my heart.” We burned the letters, watched the smoke drift upward, then sprinkled the ashes on his grave.
My husband had been wearing black T-shirts since Caleb died. At the grave site he ripped up one of them, hoping to shred his sorrow along with the shirt.
As we turned to leave, a hawk circled above us.
“I think that’s his spirit,” my husband said.
Maybe Caleb had been transformed, I thought. Maybe we had as well.
Diane Bergeron
Hebron, Connecticut
On my first day of first grade I looked forward to seeing my friends from kindergarten, but when I opened the classroom door, I didn’t recognize any faces. As everyone sat on the carpet to listen to the teacher read The Lorax, I crouched alone in the corner.
At recess I met my old friends by the monkey bars. They’d all been placed in different classes, and this would be the only time of day I saw them. On the bus ride home a few tears dripped onto my uniform, staining it a darker blue.
I eventually made some new friends, but this would be my last year at that school; my family was moving to Hong Kong. On my final day my friend Tom asked if he could sign my shirt. In lopsided capital letters, he scribbled his name on the back using a green whiteboard marker. Other friends started doing the same until, one by one, they’d all signed it. The shirt was covered.
Normally the clothes I outgrew were handed down to my brother or thrown out, but nearly ten years later that T-shirt remains in my closet. Pale blue in color, it has the name of my school written in small white lettering over the heart.
William Ho
Tokyo, Japan
My dad refuses to wear a T-shirt out of the house—he feels more comfortable in khakis and blue-checkered button-downs. But at home he has a three-shirt rotation: one with a cartoon shark saying, “Hug it out”; another featuring a frog on a dinner plate above the Latin phrase for “Get it done”; and, my personal favorite, his Zani and Gibbs sailing T-shirt.
Thirty years ago my dad said, “Fuck it,” dropped out of college, and, with his friend Mike Zani, moved to California, where they slept on a mattress in the back of a van in various yacht-club parking lots and tried to attend every regatta. They wanted to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic sailing trials, but they needed a two-person vessel called a 470. To raise funds to buy one, they sold T-shirts with “Zani and Gibbs” on the front and a diagram of a 470 on the back.
They made enough to purchase the boat but finished eighth in the regatta, four spots away from a trip to Barcelona. They blamed each other and felt they had wasted a year. The friendship didn’t survive the failure of their Olympic campaign.
The heavy cotton T-shirt fits me perfectly. Whenever I borrow it, my dad seems happy to know his thirty-year-old fashion sense still holds up. But I can’t help but wonder: Does the shirt make him think, What if we’d made the Olympics? What if we were still friends? Maybe it brings back memories of a version of himself who was willing to say, “Fuck it.”
Phin Gibbs
Providence, Rhode Island
When I was fifteen, my friend Karen invited me to spend two weeks at the beach with her and her family. Hanging out in the arcade by the pier, we spotted a boy we both liked: tanned, wavy black hair, cute smile, lean but not too tall. He was Italian, and his name was Maro. Karen announced her interest first, so I didn’t try to flirt with him. Besides, I didn’t think I had a chance. She had flaming red hair, wore a bikini, and knew every song by the Police.
On our last day a group of us, including Maro, were on the beach playing “French cricket”: you take turns hitting a thrown tennis ball with a cricket bat, and whoever catches the ball gets to bat next. I was at bat and doing well when Maro charged toward me. Instead of going for the ball, he knocked me down and fell on top of me. I lay on the sand with my dream boy’s body pressed against mine, both of us breathing hard. Then I realized everyone was laughing at us—everyone except Karen.
On the way back to the cottage she said it was no big deal, but I knew she was jealous.
When we met up with Maro and his friends later that night, Karen said she wanted to walk on the pier by herself; she’d meet up with me later. I felt bad, but not bad enough to give up a night alone with Maro.
Soon we were once again lying on top of one another in the sand. I was finally tongue-kissing! Then he pulled up my T-shirt and started kissing and sucking my breasts. I was inexperienced and thought I probably shouldn’t like this, but I did, so I grabbed the back of his head and pressed.
Then he pulled down my pants and went down on me. Over the sound of breaking waves, thoughts flooded in: Do I like this? Am I supposed to like this? If I tell him to stop, what will he think?
He looked up and said, “You can touch me, too.”
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked.
He paused. “It’s OK. You don’t have to.”
I was relieved. We went back to kissing.
Eventually we walked back and found Karen. I hadn’t needed to feel bad—she’d been under the pier making out with someone else!
When I got home, I unpacked the T-shirt I’d worn that night. It smelled like an entire football team had taken turns wearing it—disgusting and erotic. I hid it in the back of my drawer. When I was alone, I’d pull it out, inhale its scent, and cry. I thought I’d found, and lost, my true love.
Maro and I met up once more, in the city. He still had that cute smile, but he didn’t stand out in regular clothes. We went to see An Officer and a Gentleman. At the appropriate moment he kissed me, but all I noticed was the taste of the peanuts he’d just eaten. The beach glow was gone.
After that, I realized a few things. First, what I’d felt wasn’t love; it was one night on a beach with a cute guy. Second, I liked kissing but hadn’t enjoyed him going down on me. Third, I was lucky he hadn’t forced himself on me. And, lastly, the T-shirt smelled horrible. I threw it away.
Name Withheld
In the late 1960s my two oldest siblings were off at college and protesting the Vietnam War. My divorcing parents, united in keeping my brother out of the draft, were protesting the war, too. While our elders embraced change and were willing to stand out, my two youngest siblings and I, whose priorities included putting air in our bike tires and saving allowance for the ice cream truck, kept our heads down and tried to fit in.
Mom’s idea for a homemade Christmas was a cheerful distraction from the drama. The rules were simple: supplies could be store-bought but not the final gift. I found plywood and shellac in the basement and decoupaged photos of a lion family clipped from my brother’s collection of National Geographics. He winced at his defaced magazines but quickly recovered, saying he knew just where to hang it. My youngest sister drew an elephant family for me on the cardboard insert from my dad’s dry cleaning and framed it in red electrical tape. It’s no surprise we both happened upon the same theme: family.
My oldest sister tie-dyed T-shirts between college finals. She flew home with moldy-looking blue-and-green shirts, still damp from the process. The shift in our holiday routine unexpectedly strengthened family ties.
My seventh-grade teacher didn’t see it that way. She sent me to the principal’s office, note in hand, complaining about my inappropriate school attire. I entered his office and burst into tears. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch my breath.
“There, there,” he said in a calming voice. “Take a seat, grab a kleenex, and tell me why you’re here.”
“Mrs. B said my T-shirt is inappropriate! My sister made one for everyone in the family, before Dad moved out. We had homemade Christmas this year. She made it at college. It’s called tie-dye and I love it and . . . and . . . I miss her.” Another sob escaped.
The principal patted my shoulder and resupplied my tissue. He penned a note and passed it to me. “Head back to class and hand this to Mrs. B. It will help her understand just how appropriate your T-shirt is.”
Meg Winslow
Manhattan, New York
When my best friend died in fifth grade, the adults made us bedazzled purple T-shirts to wear to the memorial service. After that, purple became a reminder of the loss, and I didn’t wear it.
In college my roommate had a twenty-first-birthday party. I laughed as I opened the box of T-shirts her mom made us. They said, “Rest in Peace Caroline Waters”—the name on my friend’s fake ID. And they were purple.
I had to wear one while we partied in our small apartment before going out. When I suggested we all wear the shirts, my friends thought it was hilarious and agreed.
Shuffling down the slick stairs to some basement party later, I noticed no one else was wearing theirs; they’d all changed. I didn’t care. I laughed and danced erratically around the poorly lit room, eventually kissing a random man while wearing that purple shirt of death that made me feel so alive.
F.G.R.
Denton, North Carolina
My daughter did not yet have the word for the cottony-looking animal walking along the beach, but she pointed with one hand and tapped my leg with the other, her gaze not moving from the pygmy goat being led on a leash by a bearded man.
Swimmers came to the shore to pet the goat. Sunbathers rose to greet him. He seemed to relish the attention, closing his eyes in that languid way, each baaa drawing awwws.
My daughter and I watched from afar. Nearly two, she was not one to follow crowds. I’d named her Yemaya, for the Yoruban goddess of the ocean, but she rarely wanted to touch water. We sat a safe distance from everything that day, on a patchwork quilt made from my old T-shirts.
You’d think we had whistled for that baby goat, because suddenly he galloped toward us as fast as his legs would carry him. He regarded Yemaya briefly, then went to work on a patch of the quilt, sniffing and licking it. His owner tried to pull him away, but before any of us could stop him, he’d gobbled up the patch. Yemaya watched serenely as the goat nibbled and swallowed swirls of color like a kid eating candy.
I was amused, and also amazed: The patch he’d chosen was from a tie-dyed muscle shirt I happened to have been wearing the day I’d gone into labor with my daughter.
Xelena González
San Antonio, Texas
My dad has dementia. Although his memory and understanding are fading, his gratitude and generosity remain intact. He and my stepmom are mostly homebound, so I take them out when I visit each month. My dad relishes interacting with people, especially at Costco, where he joyously comments on anyone wearing brightly colored sneakers, intricate braids, or a nicely pressed shirt.
On a recent visit he noticed a man wearing a NASA T-shirt. “Wow, NASA!” my dad exclaimed. The man looked up from the Italian bread loaves he was studying and smiled. My dad motioned to some additional writing on the shirt and said, “What else?”
“I think he wants to know what it says above the NASA logo,” I clarified to the man.
“Oh,” he replied. “ ‘Fiftieth anniver- sary.’ ”
“Incredible!” my dad said. “Way to go!”
Realizing my dad thought he was celebrating fifty years with NASA, the man stifled a laugh and said kindly, “No, I’m just wearing the T-shirt.”
Dad said the man was being too humble and thrust out his hand as if meeting one of his heroes. “I’m Sam!”
“James,” the man said, shaking my dad’s hand.
“Wow,” my dad said again reerently.
Beginning to feel a little awkward, I wished James a great day and ushered my dad back to the produce section. As we walked away, my dad called over his shoulder to express his gratitude to his new friend from NASA.
Name Withheld
When I was ten, the rock and roll hits that crackled over my transistor radio made my insides churn in a way they never had before—none more so than “American Woman” by the Guess Who. Something about that guitar riff and the over-the-top vocals struck a chord. I bought the album with my allowance and played it relentlessly. When I made it known that, to my mind, the Guess Who were superior to the Beatles, the older kids derided me, but their mockery only made me dig my heels in deeper. Every day after school I’d close the bedroom door, drop the needle, crank it up, and scream, “American Woman, stay away from me-ee!”
The Guess Who’s popularity declined precipitously after 1970. By the time I was a senior, they’d long since faded from the airwaves. To my friends, who were energized by the burgeoning punk and new-wave scenes, it was absurd that I still championed the Guess Who.
During summer vacation my family and I were walking down the boardwalk when we passed a design-your-own-T-shirt store. I picked out a powder-blue shirt and instructed the bemused girl behind the counter to arrange THE GUESS WHO in capital letters across the chest.
The shirt meant a lot to me, but it stayed in my closet. All the eye-rolling over the years had finally gotten to me. One Saturday night, however, getting dressed to go to a club, I thought, What’s the point of having it if you’re never going to wear it? I put it on—under a button-up shirt.
A few hours later, after multiple beers, the time had come. On a jam-packed dance floor of pogoing hipsters, I unbuttoned my shirt to reveal my true colors. One by one, my friends shook their heads and moved farther away.
Scott Fleming
Eugene, Oregon
My wife and I are living in notoriously expensive San Francisco when we lose our jobs in the dot-com bust, having chosen to work for the wrong companies in the budding tech industry. We don’t have a lot saved, my wife is newly pregnant, and the restaurant work and couch surfing we did in our twenties are no longer an option. So we do the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation: we take a vacation.
Vancouver greets us with gray skies, concrete, and lots of iron-on T-shirt shops. It’s too bad they have only adult sizes. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to put a rock-band logo on a onesie?
The following summer we move from the Bay Area to central Florida. I teach technical writing as an adjunct professor at a community college while my wife spends her days in our spare bedroom, sweating over a heat press, our six-month-old daughter in a kangaroo carry. At the sound of a loud ding, like an old-fashioned cooking timer, my wife yanks up the mechanical lever of the press and places an iron-on sticker that reads, “My mama drinks because I cry,” on top of a black onesie. We have forty-seven orders today—a new record. Steam fills the room. Even with the wall AC units blasting, we can never seem to keep the house cool enough.
We purchase the logos and slogans from a company in Canada that has a warehouse full of vintage eighties iron-ons. Even more brilliant, ours is a waste-free business. We don’t make the shirt until it’s ordered, and it’s shipped literally hot off the press.
As the Florida summer gets hotter, the orders increase. My wife makes T-shirts full-time. I come home from the community college, put our daughter down for naps, and order takeout. We are the number one Google search result for “cool baby T-shirts.” The Chicago Tribune writes us up, with multiple national newspapers following suit. When I dump buckets of outgoing packages on the post office counter, the postal agents look mystified.
I quit teaching, and we move to Portland, Oregon, where we buy a house with a warehouse in the back. We hire employees. We feel like adults.
It takes a few years, but it all comes crashing down due to a little problem called licensing. Turns out the warehouse in Canada didn’t actually have an endless stash of vintage eighties iron-ons. Bands send us cease-and-desist letters. Soon everything we were selling can be found in any American mall.
Oh well. We had a good run. My wife supported the family for twenty years, and the baby in the kangaroo sling will graduate from fashion school this spring.
James Frost
Portland, Oregon
I never needed my mom to remind me to take off my school clothes when I got home. I couldn’t wait to throw off the dresses she’d sewn me (though they were darling) and put on shorts and a T-shirt to play.
Later, in my hippie days, I admired the flowing skirts and loose-fitting blouses my friends wore, but I never felt at home in them. Mostly I bought T-shirts at thrift shops. I liked ones that were already worn in.
One of my all-time-favorite shirts had a drawing of Minnie Mouse on the front, with horizontal orange stripes on the sleeves and neck. I wore it while getting ready on my wedding day. My sister painstakingly styled my unruly hair, tucking tiny pieces of baby’s breath amid the curls. It looked incredible.
When I went to put on the wedding dress my sister had sewn for me, I realized my error: There was no way I would be able to get my Minnie tee over my head without ruining my hairdo. She went and got a pair of scissors. I have to admit, I hesitated before finally cutting that beloved shirt in half.
Martha Roggli
Chico, California
I have no memories of my great-uncle Fred. I knew him only through the art that hung on our walls and the stories my mom told of visiting him in New York City in the eighties and nineties. He was young and hip then, living in the heart of SoHo. He rode horses, painted ceramics, and designed novelty NYC T-shirts for sale. I was jealous when Mom showed me the one she owns. I wanted an über-90s NYC T-shirt designed by Fred too.
My mom never cared that her uncle Fred was gay, but I cannot imagine what it must have been like for him to come out to the rest of our Catholic family, including his sister, my grandma, who found it difficult to accept him for who he was. He lived in New York through the height of the AIDS crisis and was there for the fall of the Twin Towers. Shortly after I was born, he took his own life.
Over the past couple of years I’ve begun finding joy in queer communities. I feel a hollowness in my heart knowing I’ll never get to meet my great-uncle Fred and tell him his grandniece is queer, too.
I don’t have much to help me remember my great-uncle—not even pictures of him. A couple of months ago I searched for his name and “T-shirt” on eBay. Sure enough, his original prints were being sold. It was like finding a family heirloom. Without hesitation I ordered the same one my mom has, signed with his name.
It hangs in my closet today, rarely worn because I’m afraid I’ll stain it. I’m not sure if I’ll ever tell my grandma I’m queer, but I feel like, if Uncle Fred were still alive, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.
Lucy Merkel
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The collar is starting to fray and the ink is faded, but the message is still visible: “Zeydes Union, Local 472” with an image of crisscrossing diaper pins.
One day about forty years ago, my oldest daughter was wriggling too much while I tried to change her diaper, and I said in a mock-serious voice, “Sweetie, if you don’t let me change you, they’ll kick me out of the Daddies Union.” To my relief she stopped wriggling. The line became an ongoing family bit as my wife and I shepherded her, and then her two sisters, through early childhood.
On Father’s Day many years later, the girls and their older brother surprised me with a T-shirt emblazoned with “Daddies Union, Local 472” over the left breast—472 being our street address. I proudly wore that shirt for many years.
Several years ago our middle daughter, now a mother herself, updated the tradition by giving me the “Zeydes Union” tee. I’m warmed by the sentiment and by the prospect of more grandchildren to come.
Ken Mogill
Lake Orion, Michigan
I confess, I’m a Deadhead. I’ve acquired a trove of Grateful Dead T-shirts over the past fifty years. In most cases I can tell you when and where I purchased each one. So when a friend told me she’d met a young entrepreneur who was paying top dollar for old concert tees, I wasn’t sure I was ready to part with any of them.
After thinking about it, though, I concluded that I don’t know how many years I have left, and the shirts might get discarded after I die. Anyone who would buy one must really appreciate the Dead. Wouldn’t it be great to share that legacy?
The buyer drove up from LA to meet me. There were a few I wouldn’t sell, but in the end I parted with thirty—for $2,000! He even gave me $200 for my very first one: Summer Jam from Watkins Glen 1973, which was almost too worn to wear. I was astounded.
I knew just what to do with the money.
A state-of-the-art music venue called Sphere had recently opened in Las Vegas, and some of the remaining members of the Grateful Dead were playing there under the name Dead & Company. A single ticket cost hundreds of dollars. The T-shirt money provided one of the most unforgettable concert experiences I’ve ever had. So I traded old memories for fresh ones. And, of course, I bought a T-shirt.
Roy Harkow
El Cerrito, California
A year into our relationship, my boyfriend and I went backpacking through northern India. Near the start of a three-day trek in the Markha Valley, we met two other travelers, a South African and a Brit, and immediately warmed to them. We all decided to stick together.
Our first river crossing required walking across a thin tree “bridge.” The guys had no trouble, but I was too afraid and said I would find another way. After much failed encouragement, the Brit jumped into the rushing river, crossed back to my side, and offered me his hand. He was wearing an old David Bowie T-shirt. I let him guide me across, then complimented his shirt, saying Bowie was my favorite musician. He smiled. I smiled. The spark between us was evident. That night he and my boyfriend played a tense game of chess. The Brit won.
The next day another tricky crossing required wading through ankle-deep mud, which I didn’t relish doing in my running shoes. Once again the Brit came up with a solution, taking my boyfriend’s backpack and instructing him to carry me across on his back. I emerged mud-free and further charmed.
At the end of the trek, as we said our goodbyes, the Brit surprised me by taking off his shirt and giving it to me. “Because you love David Bowie.”
I did love Bowie, but the shirt was huge on me. I gave it to my boyfriend, who wore it off and on. Years later I’m not sure what happened to the T-shirt, but I do wonder about the Brit now and then.
A.A.
Breda, Netherlands
In high school my older brother, some friends, and I decided to put on a film festival featuring movies we’d made. “Movies” is generous; they were mostly plotless farces shot on camcorders (the big kind that rested on your shoulder) and edited on two VCRs.
But the event was successful enough that we decided to host another the following year, this time with live music, concessions, and even T-shirts. I had recently made friends with a stranger on AOL Instant Messenger (this was the early aughts) who said he volunteered for a nonprofit radio station in Virginia. BigMykeMC gave the Askey Film Festival a shout-out on his middle-of-the-night slot, encouraging people to make the five-hour drive up to rural Pennsylvania. I was grateful and jokingly boasted to friends about the “media coverage” we were receiving.
The second year of the film festival was its last. After that, my brother moved away for college. I lost contact with BigMykeMC, and, a few years later, I left for college too.
While helping me move into the dorm at the University of Pittsburgh, my girlfriend wore her Askey Film Festival T-shirt—in a show of support, I suppose. My belongings loaded in a cart, we waited for the elevator. When the doors opened, another new student looked at her shirt and said, “The Askey Film Festival! Is one of you Derek Askey?”
It was BigMykeMC. Without knowing it, he and I had both decided to go to the same school, and the university had even put us in the same dorm: his room was 555; mine was 666. I would never have known it was him if my girlfriend hadn’t been wearing that shirt.
BigMykeMC and I have been close ever since. Just like in high school, we stay in touch on the internet.
Derek Askey
Durham, North Carolina
Over the years I’ve gotten used to people staring at my 34F bust. I never know if it’s because they’re attracted, jealous, or simply surprised that, at five foot two, I’m able to walk upright. I’m just glad I can afford a bra that holds them in place.
As a teen I hated having huge tits around adolescent boys, but over time I realized I could make my large bust work for me—as a billboard! In college I began buying T-shirts with feminist messages—to keep at bay those I didn’t want to talk to and lure in those who agreed that women are people.
Over the years I’ve purchased many more shirts with slogans that align with my beliefs. Some might say using my sexuality to get my politics across goes against my values, but to me my boobs are mostly a drain on my wallet and a burden on my back. At least this way I can use them to promote my agenda rather than feed men’s fantasies.
Kelly Dietsch
Waukesha, Wisconsin
After nearly four years in New York City I felt like work was eating me alive. I was too exhausted to enjoy the city during my time off and tired of always feeling on edge. A looming 30 percent rent hike became the last straw.
I decided to take a summer job at Omega Institute, a holistic-learning center a couple of hours north. My seasonal position meant I got a dorm room, meals, a stipend, and myriad staff perks—one being the opportunity to work with a life coach. That sounded like just what I needed.
Bodhi asked me questions that forced me to dig deep. He was especially relentless with the one question I couldn’t answer: “What do you want?” We’re not often encouraged to suss out how to live in accord with our desires, but with Bodhi’s encouragement, I was free to dream out loud without my inner critic shooting down ideas.
October was fast approaching, and Omega would soon close for the winter. I needed a plan. Bodhi asked: If I could have any job at Omega, which one would I choose? I thought for a moment and said, “Yours!” He smiled and reminded me of his mantra: “Ask for what you want.” That winter I completed life-coach training, and I returned to Omega the next summer, and many summers after that, to work with him.
When Bodhi retired, Omega honored him with a campus-wide farewell dinner. As it concluded, Bodhi spotted me getting up to leave. Beaming, he ceremoniously unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the T-shirt I’d given him as a retirement gift, boldly printed with his motto: “Ask for what you want!”
Suzanne Damberg
St. Paul, Minnesota
