All Meshed Up (Patreon)

It didn’t sound too bad, as curses go. “You can only wear mesh fabric from now on.” Sports stores are filled with mesh fabric clothes. Long sleeve, short sleeve, no sleeve, shorts, hats obviously, but even underwear and socks. All sneakers with at least some part mesh had worked so far, at least with mesh socks in between. Everything else, if it isn’t at least substantially partially mesh cloth, will itch. It starts out OK, but gets worse and worse, and it’s unbearable after half an hour. Water helps. I can go for hours in normal swim trunks, and as long as I sweat all the time, compression gear works too. Regardless, I always look like I’m ready to hit the gym.

But fuck me how quickly it started to affect my life. If you always wear athletic attire people assume you to sport and work out. The way people look at you and treats make you become self conscious as well, so I felt I had to step up my gym time. And it is one thing to always look like a bro walking around campus, but if you look like that on parties and on more formal occasions too, people put you in a certain box. The jock bro dude. And once in the box you get treated like everyone else in the box. Everything else is defined as an exception. You are the jock bro dude who have seen Spirited Away. You are the jock bro dude who somehow passed linear algebra. It’s suddenly exceptional.

Employments are a bit limited too, if you refuse any other dress code than burpee-ready. Anything with uniforms are off limits, as with safety gear, and anything remotely formal. It’s delivering pizza or selling protein powder, and the latter only when I started to look like I do now.

I tried putting shirt and jeans over mesh clothes, but I could only stand that for an hour. I can last one and a half in sweatshirt and sweat pants. I’ve decided to stop pretending I can do what I came here to do, and instead I’ve switched major to sports therapy.