A T-shirt

One of three T-shirts I wore clubbing for a largely hazy decade; another is only good for painting in; the third is now long-lost (the one with “Oh my God. I love it.” typed across the chest). Bought from The Dispensary around 1989, it should have been cut into dusters years ago.

Stuck to my back, this soaked up its own weight in sweat a hundred times over. It might fall apart if I ever wore it clubbing again; that said, I might fall apart if I ever went clubbing again.  But I look at this and see the green lasers at Turnmills pulling us back to the dancefloor like a tractor beam.  

How did it get to be so fragile, and worn away?  One day it seemed perfect; the next it was too thin and frayed to ever wear again.  The cluster of perforations between waist and hem are not pinhole burns; they are the countless belt-buckle rubbings of forgotten days, nights, and years.  Where did I leave the rest of this shirt? 

In the future, it will stare down the inconceivability in my son’s mind of my ever having been young, got off my head, and danced ‘til dawn, again, and again, and again. He will look at this, and perhaps we won't have to have 'that conversation'.  Maybe I’ll frame it, just to be sure.