TigerEye for the Straight Guy

We can’t save them from themselves.

All we can do is tweak, and politely suggest, and then strongly recommend, and if these means of communication don’t work, steal.

As an example, I offer the Muumuu.

The only men who should be allowed to wear those oversized sleeveless shirts — the ones that expose vast savannas of armpit hair, and the occasional male nipple — are athletes. College and professional athletes. At one point I limited this kind of shirt to Michael Jordan only, and there are days when I think I should have stuck to my guns, because while this look is borderline acceptable on, say, Vince Young, it would be a mistake on one of those truck-sized linebackers. On any other guy who earns a regular old living, they look less like t-shirts than muumuus, puddling around the shoulders and hanging, usually, somewhere between the knees and the crotch.

John has one of these shirts.

He would have two or three, because his dad bought him a package of them a few years ago. These gradually came home with me. I considered this salvage an act of mercy, not of theft. Someone might see him in the yard, after all, wearing one, and then they might see me leaving his house and perform simple addition: guy + muumuu + girl = woman that just doesn’t give a damn about her man.

Besides, I couldn’t steal my dad’s sandals, so I had to take action somewhere.

Muumuu #1, which was red but had faded to an unsettling pink, became an all-purpose cleaning cloth, which I soaked in Tilex and used to scrub the hell out of the shower and sink. The pink turned gradually white and then the Tilex disintegrated the cloth altogether within two months. (I love Tilex. Try killing a spider with it sometime and you’ll see why. It disintegrates EVERYTHING.)

Muumuu #2, which was electric blue and hadn’t faded at all, became a kitty bed for one of my mom’s outdoor strays. I think it’s still at her house, tucked around a hot water bottle in an old doghouse she outfitted on the back porch.

Now there’s Muumuu #3, which is t-shirt gray. I’d become almost immune to Muumuu #3 until last weekend, when John went to get a paper and stayed to chitchat with the gas station attendant, who must have been thinking “He’s wearing a muumuu. Poor guy. He can’t possibly have a girlfriend, but why doesn’t his sister or mother say something?”

Bear in mind, I don’t steal the muumuus and leave him shirtless. I buy him t-shirts all the time. I think the muumuus are the only t-shirts he owns that I don’t provide, and eventually I’m going to have to have a serious talk with his dad, unless of course I learn his dad has a muumuu around the house too.

I think Muumuu #3 would make a good all-purpose dustcloth, unless anybody out there’s got a better idea.