That’s what my T-shirt says. “I love my girlfriend” in big white block letters on a bright red cotton-polyester canvas. What’s amusing about this is that I don’t actually have a girlfriend. I’m just wearing this shirt because I’ve run out of clean clothes to wear. I need to do laundry. I haven’t done my laundry, because I lack somebody in my life who cares enough to remind me to do it. I haven’t done my laundry because I don’t have a girlfriend.

This T-shirt was given to me by ex-girlfriend. She gave it to me in the beginning of our doomed relationship. She eventually broke up with me because she was tired of doing my laundry. I never asked her to do this, I’m progressive, She just got tired of having a boyfriend who smelled all the time. I smelled all the time on account of my always wearing dirty clothes.

Near the end of our relationship, I still wore the shirt, even though by this point the sentiment was no longer true. At this point the shirt should have said, “My girlfriend and I have have settled into a stale routine. Neither of us will do anything about this because we put our comfort before our happiness. I no longer love her, but am still thrown into a jealous rage when I see her with another man.” Although I don’t think a lot of people would have bought that T-shirt. When, near the end of our relationship, I used to wear this T-shirt, I noticed that women, attractive women, would often approach me and comment on the shirt. Women who I would gladly have dated, were showing an interest in me. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do with these opportunities, because my fidelity to a woman for whom I felt nothing was the very trait that they found attractive in me. I, of course, can no longer use the T-shirt as a way to meet women, because that would necessitate me telling them all of this. And, while in written form this diatribe might appeal to their sense of humanity, if I were spoken to them upon first meeting me, I’m sure it would just plain scare the shit out of them.

The Ironic symbol of my cyclical, failed love life is a novelty T-shirt. How fucking American is that. The same T-shirt is no doubt being sold on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. When I was thirteen, my initial interest in women came to head while I sat under this boardwalk, huffing butane, and dreaming of the bikini-ed women I had earlier seen on the beach. I have just realized that the suburban self doubt I felt back then still lives inside of me. The only difference is that my neurosis has now divided it into an unlimited series of sets and subsets. Suburban self doubt, with a line over it, representing infinity.