Meatballs (Patreon)

What a difference three inches makes.

Funny, huh? Because, there’s a double meaning in that. One is a penis joke! Do you get it?! Because penises.

I never understood why that’s a point of obsession for the menfolk. I assume it’s all actually just over-exaggerated, and that it’s basically one of those silly tropes that gets repeated again and again, and that it’s not really a big deal. Genitalia, at the end of the day, is consistently hysterical if you step back for a moment and think about it. (Vaginas are funny enough, but penises especially — I’ve only ever seen a few in real life, but with my inbox on Instagram? I feel like a fucking scholar! That isn’t a good thing. Please never send dick pics unless they are specifically requested. Which I don’t think should be so hard to understand…? Though maybe that means that penile-self-obsession IS a real thing, and I’M the one overthinking it! [a møøse once bit my sister…])

For an essay that’s not about schlongs, this sure got off on the wrong foot, didn’t it. Permit me to start again.

If you take a look at the picture at the top of this post, the “three inches” remark should make a lot of sense. One shirt is longer than the other, by about three inches. Yeppers peppers.

But, there’s a deeper meaning in that for yours truly. I’ve been taking my sweet-ass time coming up with a few good posts for you kind and decent souls, and what I’ve discovered is that a great many of them are dealing with the notion of nostalgia. I won’t go too deeply into any of that just now; that commentary will come with those postings.

Instead, I’ll focus on these shirts. That one on the left? I’ve had that shirt for ages. So long, in fact, that it was featured in some of my very first posts on Instagram and Patreon, all the way back in 2018. That’s long enough to have any article of clothing. But for as often as I wear THIS shirt? And considering that it was, like, just some shirt I bought from some reluctant bit of online shopping? It should have died a LONG time ago.

And yet, there it is. Still operating like a shirt. I love sleeping in it.

Thing is, I’ve come to an uncomfortable realization. I always thought it would just wear out on me, that the threadbares and holes and stains would make it simply unpalatable for further use (this was before Goblin Mode), and that I would have to fold it up neatly and send it off on some floating pyre that I'd ignite with a flaming arrow (a fitting end to a good and reliable shirt).

Instead, the tables got turned. I guess I’m the one who out-wore it.

It’s been an odd funk for me lately. I mentioned this before, and in doing so, signaled to my brain that it was time to process something kind of interesting, a wee-bit frustrating, and just a tiny skosh… disconcerting (?) : I grew a little. Again.

Pretty sure that’s how it’s panned out. I haven’t had the gumption to do any formal tests. But the bras fill out more, for sure. I hang lower, which I tried to write off before as a matter of simple gravity and time. I guess I have put on some weight; most of us did with Covid, I think? (Unless you were one of those assholes who somehow stayed in shape and maintained self-discipline!) In the days before the Reign of Natalia and Olga, I never put on weight in my tits, per se. It was more of a general, evenly disbursed ‘chub’ that would overtake my form.

All I know is that I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and it kinda hit home. I never really minded that this shirt didn’t cover the girls up 100% (it is, after all, a comfy house shirt), but… damn.

I have still worn it to sleep in. Still do. And if I’m just sitting pretty on the couch or something. But the point of a shirt is to cover. Feels like that should be the point. I dunno. It’s a shirt that hasn’t done anything wrong. And I don’t feel like I should be at fault for the chicanery of my tiddies.

Maybe we’re simply going separate ways. Time changes things. I don’t want to say that me and the shirt are breaking up... "Moving on" might be a better turn of phrase. See… I’ve found another shirt.

It makes me feel nice, in a way that the old shirt did. Just like the old shirt, I get to look down at the boob slope, and see the NASA meatball on collegiate grey. It makes me feel cozy.

I’m sorry… I know, I know. It’s only a shirt. But that’s what favorite shirts do for us. Transport us back to a place where we feel [insert Don Draper monologue here]. It’s a little nostalgic, a favorite shirt. And, sometimes, you find a new shirt, and you hope you hang on to it for a while, because maybe THIS shirt will be a shirt that you get nostalgic about some day, because that means that you can still love a piece of fabric, and that you won’t get too old to establish new meaning to silly things, and that there’s nothing terribly devastating about the fact that your boobs snuck up on you and exploded by another, like, 20 cup sizes (or however-the-fuck-much), and that if you get to be nostalgic about something you just found out about one day, that means that you’ll still be alive and kicking, and not dead, and that’s never a bad thing.