Love At First Sight
How do you find friends? How do you meet people?
How do you form new human connections as an adult? I am afflicted with a crippling social anxiety.
These questions overwhelmed me until I stumbled upon a simple solution:
Band T-Shirts.
I love band shirts. I love everything about them: Art Showcases + Taste Billboards - Compelling, Iconic & Powerful. We project and attract with what we wear. We tell the world what we’re into and who we are. When I am reppin’ my favorite artist, I am hoping to meet someone. Someone like me.
I do this constantly. 80% of my wardrobe consists of band ts - The other 20% are designed by Marie Enger, Skinner and DEATH BURGER if you are wondering…
I am moving through the tall grass…
…ever ready for a wild pokemon encounter with a new best friend
(& hopefully they not Rattata)
I’ve been an adjunct chemistry professor since 2014. Day 1 of the semester, I walk into a classroom full of adult strangers, but that one kid who compliments me on my Bad Brains T? We share an instant bond.
I’ve met a couple older dads who work my local Trader Joe’s. We first connected over my metal/grunge Ts. Now we’re homies. I’ll hit them with stories of recent Mastodon tours and they, being 15 years my senior, gift me their memories of Nirvana/Soundgarden/The Melvins in small, greasy 90s clubs.
Band t-s find my friends for me and they spare me painful amounts of mingling in social settings. They are my introverted superpower. I don’t have to talk to people, unless they are talking to me. & If they are asking about my shirt? Well, then I want to talk with them! It’s been life-changing.
Ok. Ok. So I could meet people by wearing band t-shirts, but could I find love? Of course I could! I already knew how it was gonna happen…
Step 1: I was gonna be at a show, because everyone is (more or less) there for the headliner - guaranteed point of connection.
Ok. I have something in common with an overwhelming majority of the audience, but how do I fall in love? How do I find my needle in this haystack? Move on to…
Step 2: I would be wearing a band t-shirt of a different band! Maybe it would be tangentially related to the headliner, maybe it would be straight-up orthogonal, but it would be a band that I loved just as much.
That was my one-two punch. Bonding with a total stranger at a concert over another band that we are both super into? How could we not fall in love??
Did it work? You gotta be wondering if it worked! Through my band-t selection, I did connect with the occasional student, I found my Trader Joes bros & made a handful of concert buddies. But, dude. After years of meticulous curation and experimentation, I never fell in love over a t-shirt…
…Until I did.
I met my wife online. With 500 miles between us, we skyped before ever meeting in person. On that first call, she was wearing a Ramones T-shirt.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
JT⚡
