Timmy asked me to get him a funny T-shirt while in Thailand for May holiday. I obliged and got him the “Broke” T-shirt pictured below. I got myself an awesome Transformers Autobot shirt and a classic Superman shirt. I’ve worn them all multiple times already, especially the Autobot shirt, which I put on every night after dinner while reenact Optimus Prime’s battle to the death against Megatron in “Transformers: The Movie.”
Oh shit, I think I’ve said too much.
Anyway, the one shirt that I bought and love but haven’t worn outside the house is a black one with two words printed in red on the front: Fuck Bush. There were tons of anti-Bush shirts in Bangkok and Phuket (I particularly liked the one that shows a vagina labeled “Good Bush” and a caricature of the president labeled “Bad Bush), but I chose this one because of its elegant simplicity. Fuck Bush. That sums it all up for so many people.
Yet, I don’t think I’ll ever wear it out in public, even though it’s a statement shirt and black makes me look skinnier. Maybe it’s all the years of having those dorky “West Wing Wednesdays” after we all graduated from college, when Roger and Harsha and Wil and I would rotate hosting duties for our weekly viewings of the heavy-handed but very satisfying television show. What an irony that it was a liberal-minded and sugary TV show that conditioned me not to disrespect the office of the United States president, one who has wrought so much shame to divide and mind-numbing destruction.
Still, I’m a lover, not a fighter (also a slacker, napper, scratcher, gorger 等等), and the last thing I want is to be met upon the street here in Shanghai by someone whom I’ve made angry with my shirt. It’s just a shirt, after all, with two simple words on the front. I can do without wearing it out of the house. I wish I could do the same with all the anger I have at my country’s president. Just check it at the door and pretend everything is all right. But I can’t. Maybe that’s why I stay at home all the time.
