Dude, where's your shirt?

Roamless Hudson: Check this one out, wusspie. You know we’ve had super hot weather the past week or two. So, when the time came to kick back on the front porch and drink a Schlitz, I decided to do so without wearing a shirt. I’d only been outside for fifteen minutes – just long enough to start working up a sweat that would surely captivate the attractive young ladies walking by – when Fresh saunters over and starts screaming at me about how it’s wholly improper for a man to be outside without a shirt. What’s up with that?


wusspie: Tell me about it, Roamless. A similar situation occurred recently with me. I was eating a banana split on the corner of the street just outside the local ice cream shop, shirtless of course, when Fresh drives by and berates me from his luxury sedan. He said that not only was it embarrassing because everyone recognizes us from the blog and that I was ruining our reputation, but that it was completely disgusting to be consuming food without a shirt. I mean, it’s not like I was using my buff, hair-covered chest as a dinner plate. I think Fresh is way off base on this one.

Bone Fresh: In an attempt to justify his own disturbing desire to expose himself to the neighborhood, from the waist up at least, Roamless has misrepresented what I said. While I did chastise him for not covering up his doughy form, I didn’t say that men should NEVER be shirtless. There are a handful of situations where it is acceptable and even encouraged to be sans shirt. These exclusive situations are: any time it is acceptable to wear a swimsuit (i.e. at the pool or beach), while exercising vigorously, while doing strenuous manual labor, or when you must remove your shirt so as to fashion a tourniquet in order to save someone’s life.

Roamless Hudson: I’m not having any of that. It’s not like I’m John Daly walking around town topless. While a few certain individuals persist in calling me a lardo fatass, I’ve worked hard to sculpt my hot body, and I’m proud to show it off. Your rule and its accompanying exceptions are stupid, Fresh.

wusspie: The situations which you’ve described are all valid, Fresh, but I won’t have my bare-chested rights restricted. I’m a free man living in a free society and if I want to take off my shirt at a professional sporting event (like say, an Arena Football game) well I’ll be god-damned if you’re gonna stop me. Of course, I realize that not everyone should be taking off their shirt, but you want to regulate the practice out of some kind of misguided vanity. I know we can’t all have a swimmer’s body, like yourself, but we should all have the right to display the one we’ve got.

Bone Fresh: It’s funny that you should mention John Daly, Roamless. It was in the crucible of a conversation about shirtless golfing that my stance against male toplessness first formed and hardened. While just an impressionable seventh grader, a classmate of mine confronted our math teacher about his membership in the ranks of the shirtless golfers at a nearby golf club. To my amazement, rather than see the error of his ways, said teacher vehemently defended the practice. It amazed me that this young lad clearly grasped what a 40 year old father couldn’t comprehend, that the removal of ones shirt is a gross and uncivilized practice. (Incidentally, this intellectual failing was not limited to when men should or should not remove their tops and my math education suffered accordingly. At least until I took matters into my own hands.)

Roamless Hudson: I’m starting to lose you there, but I never had thought about topless golfing – I think I know what I’m doing next weekend. Anyway, I agree with wusspie. In our free society, I should be able to go shirtless wherever and whenever I want. I’m never gonna stop going topless. And in thirty years, I’m going to be just like the old dude I saw the other day, cruising around the neighborhood in his convertible with no shirt on. He was a symbol of freedom, and that’s what I want to be.

Face it Fresh, you’re in the minority here. If you don’t like topless dudes, you can stay inside.

Bone Fresh: I might be in the minority, but at least I’m not an uncouth barbarian. (A term which applies perfectly, as by definition barbarians they are willfully ignorant, choosing to remain primitive despite contact with more civilizing forces, in this case, me.) I would much rather stay inside than appear in public anywhere in the vicinity of you or wusspie when you decide to actively broadcast your ignorance by removing your shirts. I suppose the upside is I’d have no need to wear an “I’m with stupid” shirt on those occasions. Everyone would already know.