After an arduous period of unseasonable limbo, it seems that Spring hath finally sprung. As such, a proverbial wave of Spring Cleaning has swept up the household. Peg and I have spent the last several days pruning our home of needless clutter in an attempt to streamline proceedings. In the course of rifling through my drawers, looking for items that could be jettisoned, I managed to purge my wardrobe of several unsightly garments (now bound for Salvation Army). Being that I'm hoarily sentimental and a feverish pack-rat, chores like this don't come naturally -- or easily -- for me, so I considered it something of a monumental achievement. Since I was on a roll, however, I bit my lip and decided to start weed-whacking in my bountiful garden of t-shirts.
As anyone that knows me can testify, I'm a collector cliché. I have shelves upon shelves of meticulously alphabetized compact-discs, boxes of pristinely-preserved comic books and countless reams of photographs. Over my increasingly unwieldy forty-one years, I've collected everything from "Star Wars" action figures through hardcore flyers through 1" pins and all points in between. Another of my juvenile passions has been t-shirts, specifically those procured at live shows or merely ones that extol the merits of any one of innumerable favorite bands. I've amassed enough of them over the last couple of decades that I could probably clothe an entire nation with them. They're waiting in bottom-drawers, clogging up closet-space, spilling messily out of shelves and stacked haphazardly on trunks. I have enough Killing Joke t-shirts alone that I could probably wear a different one every day for two months without repeating myself. Some I happily keep in constant rotation whereas I save others for special occasions. I should also sternly point out that absolutely none of them are worn with even the slightest shred of irony.
In recent years, however, I've kept a drawer relegated to beloved t-shirts that are no longer suitable for wearing. Whether it's because the material that tenuously holds them together has started to replicate the sturdiness of the Shroud of Turin or because -- when I do wear them -- they cling unflatteringly to my ever-expanding mid-section, the fact remains that no one benefits from me sporting them outside of the house. The thought of parting with any of these treasured mementoes is unspeakable. Each is interwoven with vivid memories of specific concerts or events or parties or experiences or crucial road-trips or whole bygone eras and the like. But it started to dawn on me that they were getting out of hand. While I'm not ready to toss them out or give them away or sell them on eBay, I have to get them out of the house. It was obviously time to make a trip to our storage facility.
My friend Tod used to mercilessly mock me for my mini-storage. I believe he saw it as the contemporary equivalent of tying a dead albatross around your neck; a needless anchor preying on your conscience (and your wallet). Taking out a space at Manhattan mini-storage wasn't something I relished. After Peggy and I got married in 2001 and she moved all her stuff in, we suddenly found our home cramped beyond all semblance of acceptability. As such, I begrudgingly opened up a space on Varrick & Van Dam streets and started carting in some of my seemingly extraneous crap. When we moved apartments in 2003, even more of my stuff went into storage. Filled with flight-cases of vinyl LPs, trunks of age-old music magazines, lovingly-framed vintage rock posters, caches of Kiss action figures, crates of hardcover Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tomes, boxes of rotting film negatives, bagfuls of cassettes and other personal ephemera, my storage space started to seem like a second apartment (albeit one owned by a dim 14 year old boy). I haven't been down to the space in some time now. In fact, I've largely forgotten what exactly is in there.
So today, I solemnly exhumed my drawers of these t-shirts, and they're a stately bunch. Everything from my Pushead-designed Rush shirt from 1992 that Geddy Lee himself gave me backstage through my super-rare white Cop Shoot Cop shirt and a Bauhaus t-shirt I seemingly wore solidly through a rigorous month-long bike trek through Europe in 1987 had to go. I folded them carefully into a clear vinyl packing case and they're now sitting by the front door, waiting to go to that cramped closet on Varrick Street.
I'm striving to adopt a practical, non-materialistic view and eschew my histrionically sentimental ways, and I see myself making a lot more of these trips in the future. The real test will be, however, when I finally decide whether or not it's worth even maintaining the storage space. If I can't fully remember what's in it now, would it matter to me if everything inside it went away for good? It'd certainly save me some money, that's for sure.
That's a heart-rending quandary for another day. Until then, I guess it'll continuing serving as my own personal time-capsule.
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