Diary of a shirt

A man's life can be summed

up in a score of soiled shirts. If he is lucky. Though men aren't usually

given to recording their thoughts and dreams and actions in a journal,

you can pretty much find a chronicle of the male experience in his cuffs,

collars and sleeves.

Chapter One. What's that

smell?

My teen years were lavished

on my shirts in the mixture of nervous sweat and my father's borrowed

Old Spice. If the animal kingdom is truly ruled and structured by smell,

then my first experiences into the jungle of love were deserving of a

Mutual of Omaha "Wild Kingdom" documentary. Marlin Perkins would

have been standing over me with microphone in hand, narrating my musky

failures like that of a cheetah wearing a cowbell.

Parents are hesitant to invest

in the romantic endeavors of a young man, thus I was left only to splash

on my dad's aftershave. Restraint is hardly a quality of a teen boy hoping

to impress Donna Mitchum, so the smell and stain of my cologne hung in

the air like a Kobe Bryant slamdunk. Combine this with a hot August night

and a chubby kid in a polyester button-down and you have a tragedy that

would make Shakespeare cry.

Chapter Two. Breaking up

is hard to do.

Throughout my long bachelor

life (I say it like I was in full control), I don't know which was worse,

girls crying because I was breaking up with them, or girls crying because

they were breaking up with me. Either way, I had too many mascara-stained

collars for too many years in my life.

I would wager, though, more

than a few of the girls breaking up with me wore waterproof makeup, so

they wouldn't ruin their face for the date they had planned after they

had dumped me. During those cry-fests, I saw acting that would make Meryl

Streep look like Tori Spelling.

Theoretically, let's pretend

I had actually ever broken up with a girl. I am sure, had it happened,

the stains would have not only covered my collar, but streaked down the

broad expanse of my knit Izod. It would break my heart to feel their tears

pour all over me, begging me to stay with them in theory.

Anne Robinson actually stole

my style for breaking up with girlfriend after girlfriend when I would

simply and curtly say, "You are the weakest link... goodbye."

(In theory). I have closets full of shirts to prove it, or not.

Crazier things have happened,

right? Pee Wee Herman is back on TV, Lisa Left Eye Lopes got