This Is Not a T-Shirt

by Bobby Hundreds

  Ten years after we’d stacked our shirts on Fred Segal’s front table, we were making careless cash-rich decisions like these,1 throwing money around like confetti. I still have vivid memories of The Hundreds’ primal early days—the struggle, clawing in the dark recesses of my pantry for something to eat.2 Now we were hobnobbing with celebrities at Mr. Chow and cracking $1,000 bottles of wine. Inside the office, Ben and I were doling out meaty paychecks to experienced employees, hiring assistants for assistants, and providing benefits. We even had a real-life human resources department.

  Outside work, we were enjoying the fruits of our labor. We went from folding tables and rolling racks at Vegas trade shows to center tables and sparkling bottles in Vegas nightclubs. It was exhilarating and harrowing at the same time, like gambling at the high-stakes table with Monopoly money.

  Look, it’s nice to make cash. You can buy stuff you don’t need like Supreme bricks and a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 with less than five hundred miles on it. I bought the Back to the Future car before I even had a garage to park it in. So, I found a house that looked just like Marty McFly’s (down to the swing garage and front doorstep). Ben went out and bought paintings that were taller than any wall in his house. Somehow, there was always a table open for any dinner reservation in Los Angeles. We ate only the finest meals in whatever city we traveled to and befriended award-winning chefs.3 We got there flying business class and stayed in hotel rooms with corner views and Jacuzzi bathtubs. New cameras, DSLRs that shot 4K video, better lenses with lower f-stops, faster computers, an iPhone and a Samsung at the same time (I just couldn’t decide). I was like a walking Best Buy vending machine. With so many chargers and cords on me, I looked like Doctor Octopus—TSA’s worst nightmare.

  There’s also a quiet confidence and security that comes with a fatter Comme des Garçons wallet. Just the peace of mind, the not having to stress about rent, is priceless and made my manhood swell. We went from “nothing to lose” to “nothing to prove.” I stopped carrying business cards because the logo on my chest spoke for me. The Hundreds was establishing a name and presence among industry and audience. We stood our ground and refused to be swept away. Even if people didn’t like what we were making, they acknowledged the tenacity, the diligence. “I would never wear The Hundreds, but I respect the hustle” got a lot of up votes in the comments.

  The best part, however, was the opportunities. Doors opened and relationships unlocked. As a creative person, my dreams filled bigger rooms, and I liked the freedom from budgets. Ben gave me a longer leash to pitch more prominent artists for special projects or licensed properties. The Hundreds ventured beyond T-shirts and clothes into footwear, publishing, and music. I co-designed our first pair of The Hundreds eyewear—the Phoenix—with the designer Garrett Leight. A few seasons later, the luxury brand Celine seemed to have ripped off our chunky squared-off shades, but I took it as a compliment. High fashion was monitoring streetwear closely, and The Hundreds was on the runway’s radar. The New York Times would later claim that Alexander Wang and Riccardo Tisci’s direction with Givenchy borrowed from The Hundreds. “In the end does it matter? What counts is not whether major designers were pirating ideas so much as that they had taken note of something irresistible in the air.”

  Something irresistible. I liked that. We were in demand, but more than the money it felt nice to be wanted. I felt powerful and loved. People were listening. As a middle child, an Asian American artist, a skateboarder, and a hardcore punk, after thirty years I finally felt like I was being heard by a greater world that cared. My friend Tex used to say, “You’re one of those people where everything always works out for them,” and for the first time in my life I started to believe it. I would say it was all going according to plan, except I had never foreseen a future like this. Getting paid to sit around and draw pictures and hang out with my friends all day?

  It was everything.

  24.   ABE

  THE SUMMER AFTER the first year of law school is a critical one for students who are trying to pad their résumés with bullet points and work experience. You’ve got to get in where you fit in, whether that’s a firm or a legal aid clinic. Many students apply to intern (or extern) at the local federal or state courthouses. Riding on my first-year high, I slid right into a choice externship with the Los Angeles Superior Court downtown. The judge was a bit of a good ol’ boy and had a Chinese clerk named Robert Lee whom he nicknamed “the General” (you know, Robert E. Lee). I liked the General. We shared that Asian bond. He could tell I was a screwball.

  Sometimes when things seemed especially crazy in the courtroom, I’d glance over and see the General roll his eyes and smile. Like most Americans, my only familiarity with a court of law came from evading jury duty or watching Law & Order. That summer, I learned that nobody really knows what’s going on in the judicial system, the procedure is glued together with Elmer’s, and you can wear the same suit every day and nobody else will care if they hate their jobs. That was my experience, anyway.

  * * *

  IT WAS going to be a hundred-degree day downtown, easily. I could tell by the way the heat baked into the car windshield in early morning traffic. My first morning of work, I showed up bleary-eyed with hair swirled in all different directions. I’d reached the door to my externship on time but hadn’t factored in the half-hour line at the metal detectors. The Los Angeles Superior Court is a dizzying circus of deadbeat dads, parking violators, and TMZ paparazzi swarming around the weekly celebrity trial. Imagine showing up to your job and having to deal with Lindsay Lohan’s entourage just to get past Michael Jackson’s doctor and make it to your desk on time.

  By the time I got to my assigned courtroom, the other interns were already hastily taking notes from a grizzled man in a loose sweatshirt. He was laying out the summer’s syllabus and breaking us into the order of things. His name was Abe Edelman, the superior court’s renowned research attorney. Behind a tired baseball cap and a wiry gray beard, his sunken eyes flashed in my direction and nodded toward the sign-in sheet. The wheezing apparatus attached to his stomach and the faint smell of stale urine rising underneath layers of clothing suggested something the other interns later confirmed on our break: at forty-something years old, Abe Edelman was slowly but surely dying of cancer.

  Abe never talked much about it. But his condition was pretty obvious. While the other research attorneys scampered up and down the halls, barking into their phones in bespoke suits, Abe didn’t move much in the course of a workday. You could typically find him propped up against one of the benches outside, exerting all his energy just to breathe, ruminating and staring vacantly at the cold marble wall in front of him. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Abe was a homeless vagrant, looking for an air-conditioned respite from the midday heat. He looked twice his age, and the pungent odor of his urostomy bag kept most people at bay.

  I liked watching the nervous looks on people’s faces as they sat across from Abe in the corridor, awaiting their trial. “Should I call security?” the Poolside Pattys wondered aloud. Then a ring of eager law students would congregate around this apparent grifter awaiting instruction, laughing at his stories, begging for more.

  Abe was more myth than legend in the Los Angeles legal community. He’d graduated at the top of his class at UCLA Law decades earlier, but it was his unrivaled intellect and coarse personality that got people whispering. I remember meeting a veteran attorney during a big trial. We were chopping it up before the morning’s announcements when he asked about school and my externship.

  “Who’s your research attorney?” he asked.

  “Do you know Abe Edelman?”

  “Edelman? That guy actually exists? Wow. I’ve heard some things.”

  At this point, I’m sure Abe’s name was circulating in the community for his illness more than his portfolio. Second to that, it was probably his genius that the attorney was alluding to. As interns, we spent a lot of our hours researching cases in the courthouse’s law library,
which was also Abe’s sanctuary. Abe was never as comfortable and well situated anywhere as he was in the dulled acoustics of those heavy books and binders. The musty smell of old paper and binding glue invigorated him; those compendiums were the only friends of his I ever met. My first project for the judge was a memo in response to a complaint against the city for a busted water pipe. I spent the better parts of my evenings sifting through volumes of case precedent. To strengthen the judge’s ruling, I needed to furnish as much antecedent support as I could dredge up, but it was like hunting Easter eggs in the Grand Canyon. Wasn’t there a hashtag or a search bar to help me out?

  Abe sauntered into the room one night, scanned my complaint, and walked over to the third aisle of books. He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes and walked along the rows, grazing his fingertips across the spines. One by one, pluck, pluck, pluck—until he paused, reached down, and pulled out a brown leather-bound book with a cryptic citation code embossed on the cover. He grabbed the block of a book in his creased and sallow hand and flipped through the pages. Like a street magician, he abruptly stopped, struck his index finger down on the page, and beneath his black fingernail—like a biblical annotation in size 6 font—was the smoking gun case I needed.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I memorized the library.”

  Abe wasn’t kidding. He did this all summer long.

  But beyond the debilitating cancer and the Mensa parlor tricks, I like to think it was Abe’s dysfunctional charisma that stopped L.A.’s most powerful lawyers in their tracks. He had no filter and was possessed by his temper. Abe berated indiscriminately. It didn’t matter if you were an intern or the judge, man or woman, the loose cannon decimated anyone who messed up: a clerical error, a faulty judgment, a corrupt power play. Everyone was inferior in Abe’s eyes, and I could tell how much it frustrated him to deal with us Neanderthal regular folk every day. I don’t know if people ignored—and absorbed—his boorishness out of sympathy, but in hindsight there was something very spectrum-y about Abe’s savant nature and social incompetence. This just made me feel extra-superspecial sauce that he had taken me under his wing.

  * * *

  WANT TO hear Abe’s quarter story? It’ll give you a solid impression of him.

  One day, Abe came to work and wondered aloud, “Hey, know what’s weird? I’ve been noticing these quarters in my bathtub, but I have no idea how they get there.” As the weeks went by, he’d spot more, sometimes pennies, a couple nickels. He’d shower, look down at his feet, and see another coin stuck in the drain. Because he was too lazy and baffled to clear them out, his tub eventually took on the speckled copper pattern of a public fountain.

  “I figured it out!” he exclaimed in late July. It had been two months since he’d told me the bathtub riddle. “You’ll never believe it.” Let me preface this by saying that beneath the sweats, Abe was obese and misshapen like a dorm room beanbag. He lived on heavy fast food, minimal exercise, and bad television. I guess he’d determined that he was going to die anyway, so why not go out in a blaze of glory? He’d leave the office late and grab a fast-food bag on the way home or a Big Gulp soda from the corner convenience store. As soon as he set foot in the door of his apartment—without a girlfriend or wife to embarrass him or stop him—Abe would tear his pants off and unceremoniously toss them across the room into a heap of other torn-off pants. Whatever loose change was in his pockets would also go flying, mostly sprinkling onto the bedsheets. Then the shirt goes. The underwear. The shoes, socks—everything!

  Abe would backstroke into bed butt-ass naked with his dinner, plow through waffle fries and ranch dressing, smashing a banana milkshake into his face. Mayonnaise, ketchup, In-N-Out spread splattered across Abe’s nude body and bed like a Pollock painting. He’d wallow in the Taco Bell wrappers and straws, open condiment packets, hydrogenated oils, and trans fats throughout the night, rolling every inch of his flesh around the blankets. In the morning, he’d awaken with coins decorating his body like a Christmas tree. Too rusty to notice, Abe would make his way into the shower and turn on the warm water. By the time he had sobered up and accepted the new day, he’d look down to find another set of coins had encircled his toes like an upside-down halo. As I’m writing this, I realize Abe couldn’t have been that smart, huh?

  Whatever. That was Abe.

  * * *

  THE FINAL three weeks of my externship, Abe stopped showing up. His illness had ravaged his body and mind and forced him into an early retirement. I knew that must’ve been crushing. I’m sure he wasn’t even supposed to be there at all that summer, but he truly loved his job and the students. I had gotten a good handle on things and finished off strong even without his guidance, applying the lessons Abe had taught me over the months. On the last day of work, I was surprised to see him back in his corner of the bench. He was shockingly gray and emaciated; he could barely hold his focus while talking to us. One by one, Abe gave the externs their reviews. They hugged him, thanked him, and exited the building to soak up that last drop of summer before the new school year.

  I went last. Abe was nearly out of breath and had to take a moment before starting.

  “So, what’d you think? How’d I do?” he asked wryly.

  “Oh, man, Abe,” I replied, “I learned so much. Thank you.”

  “Bobby, in all my years of doing this, you were one of the best interns I’ve ever had. You’re going to be a successful lawyer. You’re going to have it all—the cars, the houses, the women…”

  Plural. I liked this! I lit up. “Awesome! So, where do I sign up?” I never thought I was good at much, so if the smartest research attorney in the county believed I was qualified for a legal career, then I was on board. Had I finally found my calling?

  “But you should never be a lawyer.”

  I hit the wall at a hundred miles per hour. Huh? “Wait. You just said—”

  “I know what I just said,” he cut in, a fiery look in his eyes. The lights turned on, the music stopped, the slideshow of dancing supermodels and Lamborghinis in my head shut off. I took a long look at Abe—his fingers gnarled like tree roots, the veins tangled under his skin like purple vines. His hands trembled from the medication; his wily spirit had been tamed. Hard to believe, but Abe looked defeated.

  “You don’t love this.”

  I got defensive. “Sure I do. I’m really good at it. You said it yourself, I—”

  “Being skilled and passionate are two different things,” Abe said. “Look. What do we talk about at lunch every day? Do we talk about memoranda and statutes?”

  He was right. Most afternoons, against the sun’s harsh reflection bouncing off the Disney Concert Hall, Abe and I would make the long trek to the food court in the downtown civic center. While he mauled a party tray of chicken tacos, I could barely focus on eating. I was too excited to show him what I had worked on in my black book. In the nights, I’d doodle sketches of T-shirt ideas in there. I mapped out the HTML framework for our website. I wrote down branding concepts and marketing plans and the stores Ben and I wanted to sell to. I’d share these with Abe, but he never said much, didn’t pry or ask questions; he just listened as I waxed on about the importance of an open-ended cotton blank tee versus ring spun, or a rap group we wanted to collaborate with. The Hundreds didn’t even have a T-shirt to show for itself yet, let alone a dot-com or an interested retailer, but in my mind I could envision the entire thing as it exists today. I just had to get it out.

  “Your heart is with The Hundreds,” Abe reminded me. “Do that. I have no regrets! I was the best at what I do, and I loved every second of it. And now look at me. How will you feel if you wake up one day and you’re forty and you’re dying of cancer? Will you be able to say you lived your life doing what you were meant to do?”

  I didn’t have to answer, and he didn’t have to continue. That was the first time somebody I trusted and respected had given me permission to fulfill my dreams. I had forever written it off—the notion that I could ma
ke a living off my art and imagination. My parents, my teachers, nobody encouraged it. Most tried to talk me out of it. I had built this wall around myself, but Abe was showing me the way out. I guess I was giving myself permission too. It was a turning point in my life. I was growing up and taking control of my destiny.

  The next time I saw Abe was a cold and soggy day in December, the afternoon after my winter midterm exams. I sat by his bedside at Kaiser Permanente. There was an older woman in the room with us; I didn’t bother to ask if she was a friend or relative. Abe wasn’t really there. I’m sure he was floating around somewhere in that strange and enchanted brain of his, but his body was thinner than the sheet that covered him. One of his legs was exposed, the translucent skin hanging off his bones. He was haunting and skeletal, and I don’t like to remember him this way. I didn’t even thank him out loud or say goodbye. I couldn’t align this apparition with the brash and shameless man I had known to be Abe.

  So, instead, I rewound to our last afternoon in the courthouse together. The world took on a different light then, and I haven’t been able to shake it since. From that day forward, I avowed my commitment to The Hundreds but more emphatically to a life of pursuing passion. Ben and I had started this project for fun, as a creative outlet, but now I appreciated its significance and potential. There was no turning back, no other option. Abe was counting on me to have a life worth living, and I wasn’t going to let him down.

  Abe Edelman died a few days later, and that’s when The Hundreds truly began. His spirit remains vigilantly alive and at war every day in this brand. But the greatest thing he ever did for me was put the wheel in my hands. Every year I inch closer to forty, this story flowers and ripens with colors I never noticed before.

  I never got to say it, so I’ll do it now.