I walked into the coffeeshop, and they were there.

"I got a surprise for ya'" Mick said eagerly.  And he handed me a shirt in a white plastic bag from a grocery store.

A hawaiian shirt.  A bright yellow cotton hawaiian shirt.  With bright red flowers.

"We were thrifting today, and when we came across'd it, we thought of ya'" he said.

I looked at it and my mind was a mixture of awe and disgust.

"Do you like Buffet?  Its the type of shirt a parrot head would wear."  he said.

Buffet?  Warren Buffet?  Jimmy Buffet?  No, I don't like Jimmy Buffet, motherfucker.

"Now you can look like a parrot-head."  he said, "Do you like it?"

It was ghastly.  It reminded me of a shirt I'd seen an old stoner in a musical duo wear while they were rocking out in the Bavarian Inn Travel Lodge, in the Edelweiss room to the tune of Hotel California with the beat provided by a keyboard 'gig-o-matic'.  (Which, coincidentally, is one of my personal nightmares.  I would rather DIE than become that.  And here this motherfucker was givin' me the shirt.  FUCK!)

So, what do I say?  What part of nasty, or 'flaming gay' made you think of me?  How the fuck could you look at this and think it was me?

Really.  I own NOTHING that is yellow.  I fuckin' HATE yellow.

"Yeah, wow, I'm touched by the gift, man.  Thanks."  I said.

And NO ONE was telling me the truth.  Not Audrey, not the coffeeshop girl, no one.  They all said it was great.

His mom kept going on and on about how thoughtful it was of mick and shit.  And really, on a certain level, a normal level, its a nice thing.  The fucker thought he was doing something decent for me, and I appreciate that.  Its the thought that counts.

I cornered the coffee-shop girl behind the counter and asked her in a really low voice what she thought of the shirt, truthfully.

"Truthfully," she said in a whisper, "I think its really lame."

I knew it.  But with the people around me, it was like a mindfuck.  Or an attempted mindfuck, trying to convince me that it was a decent shirt.  Which it was, if you go by things like, it had no holes, or it was relatively clean.  Then it was a nice shirt.

Now I'm gonna' haveta' wear the fucker, otherwise they'll be all disappointed.

I passed the intersection that was closed by the nasty accident.  There were memorials for the fatality.