SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Local slob Brian Helmes decreed today that the T-shirt he’s worn under his hoodie for the past 17 days is still clean, and predicted the shirt will carry that distinction through the coming months.
“I honestly don’t think I’ve done laundry in weeks, because it’s fucking freezing out and the washer and dryer are in the cold basement,” said Helmes as he pulled his hoodie over his head, concealing a well-worn music festival T-shirt. “I figure, why would I wear a new shirt every single day, when no one has even seen me wear this one? That’s a waste of a perfectly good shirt. It wasn’t exposed to spilled coffee, mustard stains, or anything else that would make me consider the shirt dirty. Therefore, it’s perfectly clean.”
Helmes’s friends suspected he hadn’t changed his shirt in quite some time when he removed his hoodie yesterday, revealing a stretched and heavily pit-stained T-shirt that allegedly smelled like the “inside of a garbage can.”
“When Brian removed his hoodie and the smell hit us, it was like when you microwave a frozen dinner and pull off the plastic film: the stench filled the room so fast I got lightheaded. I can still feel it in my core,” said longtime friend Greg Poole. “I’m not sure if we need to have an intervention or something, but this cannot continue. He could hurt someone.”
However, no one is more aware of Helmes’s wardrobe decisions than his mother and “roommate,” Nancy Helmes.
“That shirt. That goddamn shirt,” said the matriarch. “I’ve told him to wash that thing more times than I can count, but every single time he tells me the same thing — ‘I’ll probably wear it tomorrow.’ I was going to sneak into his bedroom and wash it for him in the middle of the night but he fell asleep in it. I’ve been thinking of the best way to ruin the shirt so he finally gets rid of it, but the only idea I’ve had is filling a water balloon with pee and throwing it at him. A mother shouldn’t have to do that.”
Sources predict that, as the weather gets colder, Helmes will also wear his only pair of wool socks throughout the entire winter without a wash.