Ratty T-shirt Richard Armitage fantasies

I’ve seen at least two posts on this topic that I enjoyed — at The Armitage Effect and Me, My Thoughts, and Richard Armitage, where Jas even wrote a cheesy poem. I won’t venture to interpret the photo as I’m totally without context — that left jaw clench sometimes signals annoyance and other times the weary, sad, wistful Guy of Gisborne-esque smirk; the leaving on of the sunglasses says a lot, too — but yeah, that photo (edited at The Armitage Effect, if you don’t know the one I am talking about; I’m not reposting it because I don’t know who owns it) sent my fantasies into overdrive. Brown-haired boy-next-door in spades. There’s also my old airport / airplane anti-fantasy (which I went into detail about in the comments on thefrencharmitagearmy) that gets kicked up in response to images like this. Maybe he’s still flying economy, if he dresses like that to travel? A girl can only dream — in my case, about sitting next to the guy for thousands of air miles and not being able to make herself say a word.

The beard is only the buy-in, though — the untrimmed margins at the cheeks that say, I didn’t look at it this morning, and the tiny little bit of bed-head over his scalp are most important to me when I’m dreaming of kisses — but that’s not what I think of when I see an airport picture like this. Here, it’s the everyday jeans and the t-shirt (and I wish I could have seen his shoes) and the backpack that start the gears turning. The oh-so-masculine forearms. The crew neck and especially the arm on that t-shirt. There’s no hem on the sleeve; instead, it’s serged (overlock stitched, if you’re British). I assume he bought it that way (although who knows; maybe there’s an especially serious needleperson in his life who serges over the hems of his ratty t-shirt sleeves to improve the household economy — although only the most active and involved sewers I know have a serger). The jeans are worn; the t-shirt’s not chosen for style, and even had it been, it’s been washed enough that it’s mostly lost its shape. Oh, and the way he’s standing in both photos, a little restless, as if he’s just about to move on to the next thing. To rock a bit onto his toes to see something.

The ratty t-shirt that says, Saturdays with nothing to do in particular and no one we have to impress. Just get out of bed, run your hand through your hair to flatten it, pull on some clothes, and walk out the door into the sunshine. Outside, that’s the important thing, catch the breeze before it’s too hot. Put on any clothes; a man who dresses like that probably can’t be bothered to care much about what his partner’s wearing. He grabs his backpack, we head out to the farmer’s market. Mmm, some beautiful carrots, some fresh strawberries, look at that arugula (rocket for our British friends). He pulls out his billfold to pay, unzips the backpack, layers the food inside. All the things that speak to us, no worries about how it will fit together, when the backpack is full, we’re done shopping and walk over the market, hand in hand, still feasting our eyes. After a fresh lunch, there’s no difficulty if we’ve stained these clothes, if juice from fresh berries or homemade salad dressing we’ve concocted ourselves has strayed from its path toward our eager mouths. There’s always another ratty t-shirt to put on after we take this one off — and no worries taking these clothes off or fear that they will wrinkle when they fall on the floor, or worry if they tear on the way to the nap …

The ratty t-shirt, the restless stance that says, we could be about to tour a city we’ve never been to before. We’re eager to walk as far as we can, to see everything there is to see. Everything we need (map, camera or camera phone, bottle of water, maybe a sweater or two) in the backpack; put on a ratty t-shirt that won’t show the dirt as it accumulates from the day. We’re not there to be seen, just to feast our eyes on the unfamiliar setting, to fill up our senses with new pictures. Stop and buy a pastry and a cup of coffee. Wander along as the sun moves toward its apex. Look at that steeple, that alley, that café, that little kid, the way that stair is constructed, the cobblestones, what Paul Simon would have called the “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity.” Casual touches over the back, occasional hand-holding, looking into his eyes and watching them change as he sees something he’s never seen before, shared laughter, the winces that only we notice. Sharing a water bottle. Street musicians, good ones and pitifully bad ones. Isn’t that pretty? Let’s buy one — and put it in the backpack; a treasure here, a flower there, an odd stone from the street with a funny copper vein running through that will make it into a jar of odds and ends at home and remind us, months later, of this day, a dirty napkin from the sandwiches we buy to recycle later. Running to an overhang to stand under it in a sudden downpour. At evening, when the backpack is unpacked, the debris reminds us again about all the images from the fullest of one of the simplest days, the minutest of impressions. And when the t-shirt comes off, under the dust and grime of walking, there’s another story, waiting …

Ratty t-shirts and old jeans, handy backpacks, standing in airports, waiting to take off: it’s a fantasy about shedding image, about simplicity, about the fantasy of no expectations, wandering through a day where how we see ourselves can’t get in the way, and because of that, we are freed to encounter everything we see as a wonder. About finally being so much smaller than everything we see.

~ by Servetus on July 24, 2012.