It’s a Thursday. I borrow a modified vintage Jimi Hendrix t-shirt from a friend and try it on. Everyone in the room tells me it looks good on me.

Feeling like I look nice doesn’t happen very often, so I ask the owner of the shirt if I can steal it. He says no. I think about absconding with it anyway, but I decide not to. Instead I get away with a cup of coffee and five minutes to spare before class.

Later on I get home and immediately start rooting around in my dresser drawers for the black t-shirts I used to have to wear to work back of house in a fancy restaurant. They still smell faintly of frier oil, occasionally, so I don’t particularly care for them as they are.

After like ten minutes of YouTube and another ten minutes with a pair of scissors and a couple of knots, the shirt has been transformed into something completely different.

It looks like a cross between the all-black hippie/stoner vibes my sister was fond of in the 00’s and a costume from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Lads, I am completely obsessed. I physically cannot take this thing off.

I ask my mom to take a photo. She fusses until she is happy.

I send a photo to the Jimi Hendrix fan and he asks if I can make one for him if he donates old t-shirts. The answer is yes. I post another photo to IG, and a friend comments, “Damn, you made that shirt impressively queer.”

This gets a smile.

I haven’t felt like I looked okay in a long time and it’s a nice feeling.