To Our Shareholders:
Well, what can I say? This past year, this catastrophic year to end all years — the year that felled mighty corporations like Amazonian rainforests, the year that turned the hot salt tears of countless corrupt and convicted CEOs into America’s drink of choice — this, this was our best year ever. Ever! Our stock is at an all-time high and continues to climb, while all around us kisses the abyss.We are the David to the world’s Goliath, the cute new girlfriend of this wrinkled and weathered country, the Cinderella of the stock exchange. And I, your leader, owe it all to you. Or rather, to us — we happy few (apologies, William) who understood from the start my dream, my vision, you who saw fit to generate the capitol necessary to give bloody, screaming birth to this business three short years ago.
And as a reward, in addition to the veritable giant feedbags-ful of cash that hang from your necks and clog your homes and yachts and financial institutions of choice, I am now for the first time in print going to impart to you what everyone in the media has been clamoring in vain to know: the story of how I got the idea, the inspiration, the divine mandate to produce … LEGIBLE CLOTHING(TM).
Now, certainly as far back as anyone can remember, possibly even the early 1950s, there have been casual garments with words on them. It most likely evolved from blue collar uniformed grunts delivering ice and coal, to white collar college kids in lettermen sweaters and then back again to advertisements — ENJOY COCA-COLA, CALL FOR PHILLIP MORRIS, VISIT TOMMOROWLAND, eventually leading to the introduction of the personalized bowling shirt.
But by the late 1960s and into the 70s, things really let loose and a new vocabulary began to emerge: TUNE IN, TURN ON, DROP OUT; KEEP ON TRUCK’N; IMPEACH NIXON; FOUR DEAD IN OHIO, etc. And then, in the 80s, a watershed corner was turned. I’m referring, of course to the immortal I’M WITH STUPID and MY PARENTS WENT TO (SOME SORT OF SUPPOSEDLY FABULOUS VACATION RESORT) AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.
Truth to tell, as a youth none of this interested me in the slightest, with the exception of the Sex Pistols and Throbbing Gristle muscle-tees that Skizzy Bickfield and I silk-screened in our ninth-grade Industrial Arts Club. These we wore beneath our pink and blue oxford-cloth button-downs with giddy secrecy, like Clark Kent with his S over his heart and under his grey flannel suit. Clothing that you can read was frowned on in our household — it was understood and dismissed as the brainless billboard uniform of the great unwashed, the mouth-breathing masses with their BORN TO RUN and their STYX PARADISE THEATER TOUR, their CHEVY IS HEAVY, and their RAT FINK. To say all of that ilk was vulgar and ghastly was a given for many many reasons, but I eventually realized that chief among them was: besides their unsightliness, these shirts weren’t actually saying anything.
But I get ahead of myself. It really all started four years ago when I had to take the bus. Which I enjoy about as much as getting my gums scraped, as you’ll soon see why.
It was raining and I had just walked out of Filene’s with three heaping shopping bags full of that toilet paper with the aloe in it, and there was no hope of a cab and I was tired. So the bus it was, and it arrived practically on cue and I made my way in. It was crowded because of the rain and I barged a slow, painful swath to the back of it and amazingly there was a single empty seat in the rear, next to harmless-looking heavy-set woman with a gray “Planet of the Apes” hairdo wrapped in a banana-colored snood. She wore a caftan made out of pink tarp, a macrame clutch with bamboo handles on her lap. I’d say she was in her late sixties, with those saggy, bread-dough arms and thick support hose rolled up to her knees.
Having set myself in for the long trip up Sixth Avenue, I took from my knapsack my welldog-eared copy of “McClatchy’s Fifteen-Thousand Useful Phrases for Any Occasion.” Making my way through one of my favorite sections, titled “It would be a shame if…”, I couldn’t help but notice out of the corner of my eye that this woman had pulled out some pieces of paper from her bag and was staring intently at them. Further sideward glances revealed them to be photographs. And then I was being talked to. It was her, a complete stranger, waving one of the pictures at me. At first I thought she was addressing a friend of hers on the other side of me. Or herself.
But no. “This is Joey. Isn’t he adorable? He just started wearing big-boy pants.” It was a color Polaroid of a little boy, his face glossy and his teeth gnashed, charging the camera with terrible resolve. Joey was not adorable. Unless you find bloated cobras adorable.
“Oh! Just wait! Wait!”
As if I could go anywhere. She pulled up the other picture — a pig-tailed fearsome little creature clutching two enormous trash can lids and grinning like Lizzie Borden. The woman beamed at me. She was either insane or drunk or on the wrong medication.
“And this is Jinelle, my Peggy’s oldest. She’s eight! She plays the cymbals!”
Or a grandmother.
This brings us to the first of two basic groups upon which we built the foundation of this company — two groups society holds sacrosanct and beyond reproach:
1. OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
Let me say here, as I have on both Jay and Dave as well as Ted: Sartre only partially got it right when he said “Hell is Other People”. He forgot to include their KIDS. I cannot, have not, will never, ever comfortably withstand any unwanted knowledge, exposure to, or — God forbid — interaction with this set of individuals. And yet, within our culture, it is not only suggested that such a thing is desirable to everyone, it is assumed that I, no matter who I am, am just rabid with curiosity about the progress of Susie’s tap-dancing lessons or the lancing of Bobby’s first boil or the news that last night Bernadette finally learned to go poopies by herself. This kind of thing is, to me, nothing less than the most heinous violation of my Civil Rights.
And as we have seen, to our great fortune, I am not alone.
Part Two
When Cindia finally left, it was almost a relief for both of them. Almost. He would and could have kept trying, even though it had gone from making love, to fucking, to a chore, to a trial, to his conviction: guilty by reason of sterility. But however long it took, he’d have kept at it. Alas, that was approaching forever, her time was running out — it had become her time, not theirs. And her time would become someone else’s. Of course he understood.
Of course he did.
But back to the bus. I am, in general, an unnaturally kind and patient person. I sat there as this woman’s POW for a good twenty minutes, powerless in the face of stories of Joey’s asthma and the way he eats cake by jamming as much as he can into his mouth and banging the bottom of his chin up and down on the table. About Jinelle’s blisters from baton camp. I nodded, I feigned interest. I lied. I lied to this woman to protect her happiness — this woman who was slowly, methodically, teaching me to hate.
It was. Not. Fair.
Here is the truth, the reason our endeavor has prospered so prodigiously; it is obvious but rarely, well, spoken of: Social mores prevented me from saying what I really wanted to say. What I wanted to say was: “Oh, your grandchildren. You know, it would be such a shame if SOMETHING REALLY BAD HAPPENED TO THEM.” But you see, I could not say this. And then it hit me: No, I couldn’t say it. But: maybe it could, somehow, be said on my behalf. Or something like it. What if I’d walked onto that bus wearing a shirt, or maybe even a hat (though doubtful) that read, very clearly, very LEGIBLY:
YOUR CHILDREN ARE DULL AND UNATTRACTIVE.
Would she have left me alone? Probably not. But at least I could have stood up in front of her and really put it in her face by virtue of its presentation–I could pretend I had nothing to do with it. The more I thought about this, the less tense I became, and as I withstood what seemed like hours more of her mindless jabbering, I thought of my recent encounters with what I like to call Tiny People and I was … unable not to come up with more verdicts, which ended up as my legendary first collection. They just flowed, squirming out of my head like tadpoles:
YOUR BABY IS LOUD AND UNWELCOME.
YOUR INFANT IS DESTROYING MY HAPPINESS.
YOUR DAUGHTER IS SELFISH, STICKY, AND MEAN.
YOUR LITTLE BOY IS A TALENTLESS CLOD.
YOUR TWINS ARE DULLARDS AND BEST IGNORED.
YOUR TODDLER IS GREEDY AND PEEVISH.
It felt so good. Yes, this was something — a gift, really. I know a sign when I see it. When we finally came to my stop I actually turned to the woman just before I stepped off the bus, and thanked her. She had revealed a great need and a means to meet it, and that is a valuable thing.
That night, it happened that I was to have dinner at the home of Beryl and Mark, who put me up in their place in Williamsburg for free when I first came to the city. And I returned the favor eventually, by helping Beryl get a good job at the publishing firm where I’d landed. They are two of my oldest and closest friends. That is, they were, until they decided to spawn. The dynamic of our friendship shifted seismically with the arrival of Nicky, and careened over a cliff with the addition of Charlotte. Nicky is six. He really, really likes weapons, anything that could be used to destroy or at least make a welt. Beryl, who has negative-encouragement issues from her childhood, doesn’t want to stifle Nicky’s creativity in any way, even when it leads to his recreation (in their once immaculate living room) of the light saber finale of Star Wars Episode I. Charlotte wouldn’t be so bad, except that Beryl actually allows her to decide when she wants to go to bed. She is three. She usually opts for around midnight — having worn herself out with shrieking games, and she lives to submerge her entire fist into my gin and tonic when I’m not looking, pull out the ice cubes and hurl them at me like dice at a craps game.
Even all of that would be tolerable, except these little darlings are not only accepted, but invited to dine with us at the dinner table.
Unforgivable.
Part Three
So I went to Pearl Paint and got packets of iron-on letters (about two inches tall) in uppercase Helvetica, the most utilitarian of typefaces — designed by the Swiss in the 50s and used copiously for things like hazardous material warnings and emergency exit signs. Then I went to the Gap and bought a medium V-neck leisure pullover. Once home, it took all of fifteen minutes to put them together. The trick was getting the spacing right, something I know more than a little about. I held it up in front of me:
YOUR CHILDREN ARE
OVERINDULGED AND TIRESOME.
It fit perfectly.
“Um, so, is that a band?” Beryl asked, half paying attention, setting a bucket of the Colonel’s Crispy on the table. Atop a litter of Pokeman cards. Mark was working late.
“What.”
“Your shirt. Is that a new group? I’m so out of it.”
“What, this? No.” I sipped my G&T — the one I finally just made for myself because I got tired of waiting. “I made it. This afternoon.” I remembered when she used to make things. Like Coq au vin.
“Oh. Nice color. Nicky! That’s not a toy, sweetie.”
No, it wasn’t a toy. It was my new Burberry umbrella. With ketchup on it. He held it under his armpit and swooned dramatically, as if he’d just been stabbed with it. He must have been reading my mind.
“I’m sorry,” Beryl giggled, “But that is a sketch.”
“Nicky,” I said, rising, “Do you know what my shirt says? Hmm?” He wasn’t listening. He was writhing on the floor, making a noise like a dying ostrich.
“Nicker that’s enough.” Beryl attempted. “Oh, where’s Charlotte?”
On cue, the ice hit me on the face, chest, and upper thighs.
I left early, eager for a decent meal and a drink that stayed in my glass until I decided otherwise. But at least I said what couldn’t be said. Or shouldn’t.
But should.
He first heard that Cindia and Ralph were expecting from Frieda, a mutual friend and budding psychotherapist who ran into him on line at the Dean and Deluca cheese counter. She thought he’d be happy for them. She never did “read” people very well.
Honestly, it was only supposed to be a hobby. I would have never thought seriously about it as a career or a full-time business, much less taking it public. Just for fun I made up a couple dozen shirts and took them to some of the more outré shops in the East Village, Soho and Chelsea. Some of them bit, some didn’t, so what.
But then, as you know, the impossible happened: Suzanne Somers went on “Larry King Live” and threw off her blazer in the middle of the interview to reveal one of my initial experiments that she must have bought at that faux-punk boutique on St. Mark’s Place. It was a robin’s egg blue belly-tee that said:
YOUR HAIR DYE IS UNCONVINCING,
CLUMPY AND SAD.
Well. That changed everything. God bless you, Suzanne. Of course, the poor thing thought she had terminal ovarian cancer at the time and was promoting a book about it, and figured what did she have to lose. Larry didn’t even notice at first, but once he put his glasses on to scope out her milk bags he almost coughed up his pacemaker. It could have ended there except the doomed dear (she wasn’t at all, natch — it turned out to be just a clump) when on and on — plugged the store, my name on the label, the whole nine.
“I figure I’m finally in a place where I’m tired of lying Larry,” she said, snapping her Vanilla-Peach Bubbleicious, “To myself, to my family, to you. When I saw this shirt yesterday, something clicked, and I knew I had to wear it here. Look at you. You look horrible, Larry. Pathetically trying to perpetuate a sense of youth I doubt you ever really had in the first place.”
I gave interviews non-stop for weeks. The orders were unbelievable. I got a new, unlisted private line. I rented space. I took meetings. I found factories. I met many of you.
And you helped me. Oh, did you help me. Did I know from running a business? From privatizing? From IPOs? Good heavens. I’m, well, not an artist per se, but a … person who makes things. And loathes children. And has blended the two into a formula for success.
And so, for the second collection I thought it through to it’s natural progression, to the next group that really needed addressing. It was easy:
2. OTHER PEOPLE’S PETS.
Now, I have nothing against people’s pets in general, just as I have nothing against people’s unfortunate medical conditions or their relatives in jail. But as with both examples, I don’t want to hear about it. Because, when you cut to the chase, cornering some poor bastard with allegedly adorable stories about your dogs or cats is even more actionable than fobbing off your kids, because children–at least science tells us–are human beings. Animals are not. THAT is why we call them animals. My dream: if I could make people actually step outside of themselves when they were interacting with their pets and take a good hard look at what they were doing, I could possibly help them, and then discourage them from bothering me. I could make them see that when they speak in the manner of Betty Boop to address an Australian Ridgeback the size of a pony, they might as well unfold their human dignity like a newspaper and slide it under its butt while they’re at it.
Part Four
Summer, 1985, after his sophomore college year. Good to be home, looking forward to mowing lawns, hooking up with the old gang, fucking around. But the house seemed, what — quieter. “Say, where’s Penny, where’s Jet?” he asked of the family dog and cat, only half interested. “They’re gone, dear.” said his mother, brushing something away from the living room sofa. “No one to take care of them. We decided it was time. They were getting up there, and Penny’s legs were starting to go. It wasn’t fair for Jet to win out, so we took care of them both at the same time.”
It wasn’t a big deal to him. It really wasn’t.
So, another experiment. Bill and Stephen were friends I’d often turned to over the years for respite against the tyrannies of an insane world. They understood that to be a pet owner was to moon like a retard.
And then from out of nowhere, shazam: Bimple and Tater. Two cats of dubious origin from the shelter. Bill had turned fifty, sold his thriving hair-waxing business and needed a project.
He came upon an SPCA ad in the Blade, made a visit, and that was that.
“You just have to see them. They’re cunning.” Bill cooed on the phone.
“I can’t believe this. I thought we agreed: pets are only useful if you run out of firewood.”
“Oh, don’t be what everyone says you are. And besides, it’s true. Now we can snuggle.”
“That wasn’t what we meant. Put Stephen on the line.”
“He can’t. He’s giving Tater a milk bath. Breakstone’s half and half, actually.”
No, no, no.
Soon Bill was spending his days meticulously stitching together a Robin Hood costume for Bimple and a Friar Tuck robe for Tater (he’s FAT). And Stephen used the remnants of one of his landscaping jobs to build them their own little Sherwood Forest in the corner of the couple’s Chelsea loft. Soon Nest magazine got wind of it and Bill waxed Bimple’s paws himself for the photo-shoot. This had to stop.
I showed up at their doorstep in a XXL Haines maxi-T. I used three inch letters this time.
YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOUR CATS
IS UNHEALTHY AND EMBARRASSING.
And you know what? They thought it was hilarious. Which was quite maddening, as it did nothing to rectify the situation in any way. But they each ordered a shirt, and that’s been the consensus across the country. People seem to, at least on some subconscious level, understand that they regress beyond hope when they meticulously chop up specially-grilled pork chops for their Llasa-apsas and train their Persian Long-hairs to pee in the sink. So, I thought, let’s hit them where they live.
YOUR DOG IS DREADFUL.
YOUR CAT IS APPALLING.
YOUR COCKER SPANIEL HAS NO MORE SENSE
THAN GOD GAVE GEESE.
YOUR SIAMESE IS DREARY AND SELF-ABSORBED.
YOUR PETS ARE INCAPABLE OF AMUSING ME.
YOUR PERSIANS ARE TOTALLY UNWORTHY OF DISCUSSION.
YOUR PUPPY IS COMPLETELY UNSUCCESSFUL.
YOUR LABRADOR IS MALODOROUS AS IT
ATTEMPTS TO MAKE PUPPIES WITH MY LEG.
YOUR CAT IS UNDESERVING
OF ANY ATTENTION WHATSOEVER.
Another bull’s eye. So then I expanded to other family members:
YOUR WIFE IS UNATTRACTIVE YET NARCISSISTIC.
YOUR HUSBAND SHOULD CUT HIS SIDEBURNS,
BUT IT WOULD ONLY BE THE FIRST STEP
ON A LONG, LONG ROAD.
YOUR GRANDCHILDREN ARE SLOW AND PLAIN.
And institutions:
YOUR MARRIAGE IS A MOCKERY
OF HUMAN INTERACTION.
YOUR DIVORCE IS A GIVEN.
These, frankly, did not meet our expectations. Apparently there is only so much we want to be awakened to.
Part Five
Enter to win a signed copy of Chip Kidd’s new novel, “The Learners,” by joining the FiveChapters mailing list with a note to editor@fivechapters.com.
In the shower, he’s half awake, a meeting in forty minutes. Hand behind his head, he reaches his right armpit with the soap — small pain, and … a lump. Ouch. Well. It’s nothing. An infected pore. It’s got to be nothing. Gotta have that looked at. What does his next week look like?
So for our third collection, I decided to change the point of view. It was no longer about the audience:
MY PATIENCE IS LIMITED.
MY LOATHING CANNOT BE OVERESTIMATED.
MY JUDGMENT IS SWIFT AND TERRIBLE.
MY THRESHOLD HAS BEEN REACHED.
MY DISAPPOINTMENT IS BOTTOMLESS.
MY BITTERNESS KNOWS NO BOUNDS.
MY HATE FOR YOU IS THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME WARM.
Surprisingly, (but then not, when you re-position it) this was a real hit with the boys and girls aged 11-14 outer urban demographic in households with a combined income of more than $150,000 — the golden circle. When Leonard Smarp, 13, of Deersberg, Minnesota was sent home from his fifth period Civics class (Civics!) for wearing one of our MY CONTEMPT FOR YOUR WELL-BEING IS UNCONTAINABLE. polo-sport-jerseys, it was only a matter of time before the multi-million dollar lawsuit initiated by the ACLU against the Deersburg Valley Educational Board brought us the best third quarter we’d ever had. Skizzy and I salute you, Len.
Naturally, we continue to expand. The possibilities are limited only by the boundaries of our longing. Next year, we will introduce LEGIBLE FOOD(TM). Picture it — jelly-filled snack cakes with the slogan written in Olestra-butteriffic-cream icing across the top:
WE WILL SOON BE YOUR POO.
and potato sticks that spell out
WE ARE KILLING YOU
WITH IMPERCEPTIBLE SPEED.
The Collectible market alone will be huge. And Globally? Translators everywhere are feverishly working as you read this.
Finally, the test results. It’s … inoperable — spread everywhere. Six, maybe eight months tops. Two more opinions agree. What else is there to say?
Faithful supporters, you can count on LEGIBLE CLOTHING(TM) to continue to deliver the unexpected, because that is what makes us grow. With the success of the YOUR and MY lines, the marketplace was waiting for us to follow up with THEIR and OUR, and yet more disparagement of kids and pets. Is that what we gave them? We did not. We gave them something new, something that reflects the times we live in like we’ve never admitted. And they love us for it. If you haven’t heard, allow me to officially announce: the re-orders for the new I line are unprecedented and show no signs of slowing. And with the holidays nigh upon us, prepare yourselves for triple-digit growth.
This is what it’s all been leading up to:
I’VE LOST EVERYTHING.
I JUST CAN’T, NOT ANYMORE.
I USED TO DREAM.
I TRIED.
I’M SO ALONE.
I WANTED SO MUCH MORE.
They are all flying out of the malls. And our new number-one best-seller to date?
I AM AFRAID.
Can’t keep it in stock. So, there it is my friends, my allies in Donnable Language. My tongue cannot produce enough THANK YOU’s to ever properly express my gratitude for your role in our mission, to tell how I really feel. So it won’t.
Because thanks to us, it doesn’t have to, any more.
Sincerely. Yours.
