I just wanted a couple of t-shirts

Spring is on the way and with it, almost whispered in the sharp breezes, is the call to restock my spring wardrobe. This, of course, means I need more t-shirts – colored t-shirts: no pockets, no slogans, no brands, no designs. Just t-shirts – plain and simple.

I have five or six plain tees already (and a couple of branded t-shirts that fit and don’t offend too much), which would carry me through an average week between laundry visits, but I – apparently -- am a slave to consumerism. At a gut level, a dark level where control fails, I need to freshen my look for spring.

To fulfill this primal urge, I followed a giant red posterboard

!!!!!!
Up to
50% Off
!!!!!!

starburst into an O.M.G. store on Broadway just north of Canal Street.

Oh. My. God. … That’s the name of the store.

O.M.G.

Oh, my God?

It is Canal discount retail in a Soho boutique retail space. High ceilings, bright lights, thumping music, a dozen or so cheery young retail clerks scurrying about, hip-hop hoodies, baseball caps, $100 shoes, jeans, jeans and more jeans … and t-shirts – most with nesting skulls or white-on-black flames or 8-balls or Obama or the rest of this year’s cool symbols of urban American youth.

Granted, I’m cool. Granted, I’m urban now. Granted, I’m American. But … I can’t, with any real conviction, lay claim to youth anymore. It’s the silver in the beard, I think. Or maybe the fact that chronologically I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the dreary Manoir de Middle Age, a “For Rent” yard sign in my hand.

As I walked past the jeans, jeans and more jeans toward a stack of t-shirts that looked to be your plain, general purpose Fruit of the Loom Heavy tees near the cash register, a cheery young retail clerk woman swooped in on me … at my six, out of the sun. I didn’t even hear her coming until she buzzed my ear.

“Help you?” she asked in a cute, cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent. She was about 5-foot-6 and curvy in a blood-churning way.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I always say that, even when I’m on a genetically induced, seasonally specific wardrobe mission. “Just looking, thanks.” I wasn’t just looking. I was a driven man. I was a haunted, hunted man. I was a man consumed by a need for tees.

“Just looking, thanks.”

“Kay,” she said. “Could you look here for a minute then?” She pointed to a wall, 20-foot high and loaded with Levis 505 jeans. “I really need to stretch my back out and I can’t unless I’m talking to you. Rules …” She rolled her eyes.

“Anything to help,” I said. I’m just that kind of pro-labor fellow.

I pulled a pair of jeans out of the stack and checked the price. $48. She started stretching. It was actually closer to writhing, thrusting and jutting than stretching, but it wasn’t my place to say that. Add a pole and a mirror ball and a platform and I would have been holding a $10 beer and a fist full of dollar bills instead of a $48 pair of jeans. I put the jeans back, making sure the stack was squared off.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said with a smile.

“Yes I do,” I said. “O.C.D. Attention to detail.”

In response, she bent and touched the floor with the palms of her hands … with a smile.

O.M.G.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I couldn’t see Manoir de Middle Age anywhere anymore. It was gone in a flex and a flash of youthful sun, but a line about washed-up, middle-age salesman Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” flashed through my head. “Attention must be paid.”

And attention was paid … to the gentle curve of my cheery, stretchy stripper clerk’s tawny back at that point in reality and fantasy where shirt and jeans fail to meet.

“So, finally attention must be paid to such a person.” And who am I to argue with a classic of American theater?

Out of the thumping din of jeans, jeans and more jeans – at my six, out of the sun – another cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent pushed into my head.

“36/32,” it said, a runaway non sequitur careening into and derailing a warm train of thought. Again. “36/32.”

“Huh?”

“36/32.”

I turned to face the voice. It belonged to a cheery, short, round clerk with slivers of silver stabbed through various parts of her face. She was holding a pair of khakis, which she thrust in my face.

“Excuse me?”

“36/32. I got you 36/32.”

For the record, I wear a 32/32 … so I said, in what (upon reflection) was an amazingly girly voice, “Do I look like a 36?” I don’t know where the voice came from and I hope it never returns, but there it was. “Do I look like a 36?”

My cheery, stretchy, stripper clerk straightened up and said with what (upon reflection) was a sly smile, “Not even close.”

“Aren’t you him?” the cheery little round clerk asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t. … What?” I asked.

Her bulb grew dim. I watched it on her face.

“He ain’t a 36, Kimee.”

“You’re looking for a rounder guy,” I added, hopefully helpfully.

Kimee threw the khakis on the rack, right next to my precious tees -- $4.25 each. “36/32,” she said.

“T-shirts,” I said to my stretchy clerk with her back like summer sun. I was very confused, grasping for something to keep me from falling down the thumping, shopping, stretching, gay-voiced 36/32 rabbit hole of hip-hop hoodies, tawny backs, high-dollar sneakers, sly smiles, jeans, jeans and more jeans.

“T-shirts. That’s what I’m looking for.” She nodded, smiled again and walked across the store to another customer. T-shirts don’t justify floorshows at O.M.G.

I was left with poor, lost Kimee.

She stood next to me as I searched for a large gray t-shirt from the stack (returning each failed attempt to the stack, squared off and tidy) and kept muttering “36/32” into thumping air. Suddenly – at my six, out of the sun – a male voice rang out from across the store. “Are those my pants?”

I whipped around hoping to see a tubby doppelganger. Instead I saw a man about my height, but that’s where the comparison ended. It was wishful thinking on the 36-inch waist for one thing. He had a full head of hair for another. And, finally, he was … old.

I threw Kimee a glance and hissed in her ear, “You thought I was him? He’s old enough to be my father. You are so off my Christmas card list.”

She threw me a blank stare. Actually, she didn’t throw it. It just sort of dribbled out of her eyes. “36/32,” she said, then went to help her old man with a pleats v. no pleats conundrum. I was left to my t-search.

That’s when I noticed another old guy – thin, balding, looking through a stack of t-shirts – in the full-length mirror to my right. And Manoir de Middle Age arose out of the mist of my mind.

O.M.G.