“Cleaning out one’s closet . . ” An expression that has come to take on meanings both practical and therapeutic. I just dug up some t-shirts that I wore in my 20s and hadn’t laid eyes on since. They were adorned with such statements as “National Pimp Association”, “I like girls that like girls”, and “I’m just 2 girls shirt of a threesome”. One even revealed a three-step plan for breaking up with your girlfriend, and another was a Dick and Jane spoof which read “Tom is a true Mack Daddy. Pimp Tom Pimp.” I’m embarrassed now to know how cute and clever I imagined myself to be, blissfully unaware of what a (sleep)walking billboard for bro-dude hypersexuality, humor-coated misogyny, lesbian fetishism, etc. I must have looked like. The only good thing I can say about these t-shirts is they hinted at my nascent attraction to parody which I’ve since gone on to do a great deal with. But all of these sentiments were celebrations of the symptoms of our poisonous patriarchy; early whispers which I would possess the gall to be alarmed by when they became behemoth bellows in later years. The Huxtable betrayals. The #MeToo revelations. The “grab-em-by-the-pussy” President. (Trump would get a kick out of these shirts.)

I’m donating bags of clothes, but these are going in the garbage. I don’t pretend that this act cleanses me from sin. But it does feel good to acknowledge some of what I’m growing out of. And who I’m growing into.