A T-shirt

A T-shirt from Filmelange, another Japanese company making an art of the everyday.  

There are some things that are, or become, so soft and familiar that you don’t notice them.  Then there is that rare object or experience that is even softer - whose softness makes it unavoidable, impossible to ignore.  

In a department store a girl asked if I’d like to try one of Aesop’s scents, then said, “This is the best way to put it on...”, applying it to her wrist, then pushing up my sleeve and smearing her skin against mine; I can almost taste its softness now.  It was the most curiously erotic thing a stranger has ever done to me. 

At a Christmas party in the mid-90s, on a balcony overlooking the Mall, a colleague stepped through the doors and kissed me on the mouth, our lips overlapped for a moment, me-her-me-her.  As she pulled back, my bottom lip caught between hers and pulled away from me for a heartbeat, no more; but it’s still there.