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I lost my Batman shirt somewhere between three big relationships and the smattering of women for whom, for brief hot moments, the definition of our proximity wavered from “girl I’m dating” to “friend” with a knowing wink.
The shirt was wrapped in stripped paper Christmas ‘89. It served as a trophy of sorts. That summer Tim Burton’s Batman movie hit the theaters, theaters I visited no less than seven times. Since I at the time considered Batman the finest film ever made, I brandished my repeated viewings with pride, the shirt merely an acknowledgment of already measured feats.
I grew up, more or less, but still wore the shirt even when a succession of films overtook Batman’s place in my hierarchy. Resevoir Dogs to The 400 Blows to Ikiru, all reflected a supposed refining of sensibilities with age and experience.
The shirt’s persistence in my wardrobe begged to differ.
The prime suspect in this mystery, Shiva, on facing intervals apart, in a coquettish sotto voce, would request an unwashed shirt, a set of olfactory jumper cables, I guess. After our lips’ last part, I would hand her a crumpled ball of 100% cotton. She would bury her face, like one of any great beauty, one at once childish and severe, instantly within.
I left Batman with Shiva a few times. Batman proved to be a favorite of the naked or near naked women who wandered in and out of my life. If I caught some nymph in a favorite tee of mine, I would work up mock annoyance in a mock lather all the way to mock anger, providing myself fitting excuse to throw her back on the bed, dispose her of the shirt, and engage in one of those ritualistic comedy of errors love or lust drives us to perform.
I’ve lost a lot of shirts over the years. Innumerable black-pocketed tees I’ve replaced with startling regularity. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology navy-blue worn with a smirk all throughout college at an institution that wasn’t M.I.T., yet similarly overwhelmed with its sense of self. The smiling skull Marine olive-green worn in honor of my buddy who eventually served in Afghanistan and Iraq, worn and lost before either of those wars were prosecuted, lost after I forgot any such defense of its screen-printed logo: Mess With the Best, Die Like the Rest.
These kinds of losses are meaningless unless we make metaphors of material, a currency for moments tender or trying. A faded black t-shirt with a peeling yellow logo seems a small price to pay for pieces of variegated loves.
Still, sometimes, I just want my Batman shirt back.
