Like any city-dweller except for the actually urban ones, you want to look more urban than you are. It’s hard being sub- anything. Your inner streets may end in cul-de-sacs, but no one needs to know that just from looking at you.

So, you drive to Urban Outfitters. In your 29 years of existence you have never set foot in one. Inside, these stolen ideas seem wonderfully new to you. You run your hands through a technicolor row of pashminas, marvel at the ornately ripped knees of some joggers, open the Sufjan Stevens CD case on the “Vibes” wall and find it empty, except for a note: “There’s no such thing as original.” The store is a mixture of junk and treasure, like any good urban place. You’re enthralled. But you must hide it, judging from the look of the impossibly cool and jaded store clerk watching you fumble with the vinyl player. You leave it alone and flip through a Cy Twombly coloring book.

“Looking for something?” The clerk has called your bluff. If you were really as disinterested as you wanted to seem, why would you be here?

A tiny black arrow is lodged in the clerk’s septum, decoratively. Their incredible indifference reminds you of a famous bouncer in Berlin who can see into a person’s soul, according to Vice.

“Oh,” you say. You hesitate, pretending to search for the interest to overcome inertia. “Maybe some outerwear.”

The clerk turns and gestures toward the other nine tenths of the store. Their nose-arrow points right at you. It’s over. They can see the ligatures of your identity coming loose.

“Any particular type of outerwear?” says the clerk. “Bombers, puffers, a fleece, a teddy? Quarter zip, half zip, whole zip? Chore coats? Popovers? Anoraks? Denim? Corduroy? Leather? Vegan leather? Lightweight? Heavy? Style, brand, reason to live?”

“Huh?”

“Raison d’etre. It’s a brand. How about a Savage City Moto?”

“Uhh, maybe just a t-shirt,” you say, experiencing something like a language gap. “But not one of those band tees where instead of a band it names a mass casualty event… I'm not a fan of the Jonestown Massacre.”

The clerk leads you deeper into the store’s ironic maw, deeper into urbanity. Slogans ring out from the walls as you pass depiction after depiction of soft-core rebellion, ending at last in a black, white, and red print in the Soviet propaganda style of Alexander Rodchenko. But instead of workers it depicts rich people.

“This is our OBEY line,” says the clerk. “Very counter-cultural and very in right now.”

“Counter-cultural is back in?” you ask.

The clerk stares mutely. You’re starting to feel frantic.

All of a sudden, you bump into a full-sized mannequin of Andre the Giant. You have to tilt your head back to take him in. He’s wearing an XXXXL shirt that, like the rest, commands you to OBEY.

“So why’s it called OBEY?” You ask. The clerk glares, indicating you’ve just spilled your boiled-frog idiocy all over the carefully wrought art clothes.

“It’s a commentary on consumerism.” With that, they leave you to stew in your ignorance.

You check the price tag and wonder what the commentary from a $70 t-shirt could be besides Love It.

You observe Andre the Giant Mannequin’s preposterously broad shoulders. He shrugs. What exactly does this brand want you to obey?

“Nothing,” says Andre. “OBEY means disobey.”

“Then why isn’t it DISOBEY?” you ask.

“Because disobedience has been co-opted. Elites would love it.” Andre rips a collared shirt in half, to signify, you imagine, his disdain for elites.

“Don’t elites already love OBEY?”

“No.”

“I mean, I’m thinking of getting an OBEY shirt just to look more elite.”

“You will never be elite,” he says.

“Uh, thanks? But then who are the elites if not the people paying $70 for a t-shirt with one word on it?”

He pauses for an awkward length of time, even for a mannequin. Then: “Corporations.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s not a t-shirt,” he adds, before returning to his dormant state. “It’s a makeout shirt.”

You think hard. What makes these shirts cool? It can’t be 1927’s font of the future, Futura. Culturally speaking, Futura is Dippin Dots. And it’s not the goofy mannequin giant, modeling a shirt size for no one. Though you like that he talks. Is it the sheer absurdity of the message? Or is it a meme? Perhaps it’s the obscure and somewhat scandalous movie reference. If you were to make a clothing line out of a John Carpenter film, it wouldn’t be They Live. But you’re not famous. Could it be the setting they’re sold in? Covert, anti-consumerist messages planted behind enemy lines, their sense of revolution sharpened by contrast with the pretty, pre-distressed fabrics on the rack—even though it too has been washed out?

Or maybe it makes no sense. However you look at it, your bewildered musings beg the same question: what is cool? Irony? Really? You hope not. And if not, when did obedience become cool? When you were a youth (are you still a youth at 29?) the cool thing was disobedience. In high school, you never got clout for your steady attendance. The cool ones were the ditchers, the disrupters, the all-around rogues. The same’s still true at work. Only more subtle. You think of María Castela, the cool coworker. She hardly does any work. But she doesn’t disobey either, not outright. She glides through a slim strait of noncompliance, neither nodding nor shaking her head but moving it in a circular, spell-like motion to ward off the requests you make of her. María is cool. She has the whole office under her spell.

And now, it all makes sense. Spell-craft, you realize, is not some mythic wish—it’s about the right words and the right gestures at the right time, in the right order, with the right rhythm. In a word: style. And it can be practiced.

So, you grab the makeout shirt and leave without paying. By the time your heart rate steadies, you’re halfway home in your Camry, smiling and stroking the makeout shirt’s high-grade cotton. You feel full. Full of a dark, renegade pleasure. Yet capable of more. Shopping cannot give you this. Truth cannot give you this. This feeling is new, but it was there all along, at your molten core, buried beneath a crust of rote thoughts and movements.

You feel, in a word, cool.

When you make it home however, the guilt sets in. At night, you sleep in the shirt, afraid someone might break into your quiet, suburban apartment and take it from you.

Your dreams return you to Urban Outfitters. You go deeper in than you’ve ever ventured, deeper than you thought possible, all the way to the back wall’s angular bookcase (mid-century mod!). Andre the Giant nods. You pull a deck of tarot trading cards from the middle shelf, and the bookcase slides to the left, revealing a secret passageway. You hesitate. You’ll have to crawl to make it through.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek,” says Andre.

You proceed, cold metal chilling your hands and knees. The tunnel opens into a gray and clinical room. It’s big, but it feels small. Three of the walls are bare; the other holds dozens of TV screens, each one showing the same image of you emerging from the tunnel. In the center of the room is a podium housing a digital tablet. It faces away from you, toward the TVs. Standing at the podium and watching you on the screens is the architect of the OBEY campaign himself, Shepard Fairey. You recognize him from a documentary about the rising cost of graffiti. You also notice Andre. Somehow he made it here before you. He’s sitting in one corner of the room, in a wingback chair the size of a garage. He too watches you on the TVs. The odd thing is, on screen, you can no longer see the tunnel.

You look behind you—it’s gone.

Fairey turns to face you, and, like a conductor, bows. To your surprise, his shirt does not say OBEY, but: “Listen to the fucking Clash.” He turns back to the podium and touches the tablet. The OBEY logo flashes onto every screen.

In horror, you realize you’re wearing the makeout shirt. The proof of your crime is right there on your body. There’s no denying it. You must have been led here for your punishment. Or, perhaps, your reward… for disobeying.

Fairey touches the tablet again and the logos disappear. Now it’s his face on TV, one big, fragmented face made up of all the combined screens. Regular Fairey keeps his back to you, watching himself, while Screen Fairey speaks. His tone is explanatory, like a journalist’s.

“I started making art because I was interested in how Punk found its way into the mainstream. I was a skateboarder, so I paid attention to the art I saw in the streets. I liked how street art could make people stop and reconsider something. Pause. Reflect. Slow the fuck down. I started sketching Andre because his face had that effect on people. It’s also a kind of symbol, and I’ve always been interested in symbols, especially Americana ones. Every symbol that seems bright and hopeful has a dark side too. But people forget that because of a certain theft.”

You wince.

“Oh don’t worry,” Fairey says. “I’m not talking about your theft. Your theft was banal. I’m talking about the theft modern consumerism perpetrates against individuals, the theft of complexity. I’m trying to give that complexity back to people. That’s why I make art. Punk art.”

Fairey turns to face you, eyes wide. He looks a lot smaller in person. Now the screens shows the back of his head, blown up to a ridiculous size.

“Well,” he says. “What did you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you think of my rant? Any questions? Comments? Do you agree?”

You thought it was self-indulgent. And you didn’t really appreciate your life’s most daring robbery being called banal. But you don’t say this. You say, “Do I agree that you make art?”

“Punk art. Do you agree that my art is Punk?”

“I think you’re asking the wrong person,” you say.

“No at all. I’m asking you of all people precisely because you’re ordinary. You’re the most ordinary person on Earth. To be a truly populist artist, I have to win you over. Do you think I’m Punk?”

“I’m not necessarily even sure what Punk is.”

“Punk is anti! Punk is rebellion! Punk is a shock to the dominant structure!” Fairey is sweating through his Clash t-shirt.

“Then no,” you say.

“What! Why not?”

“Because, $70 for a t-shirt? That’s not Punk.”

“Of course it is. It’s punking the people dumb enough to buy it. They need to reflect on what’s valuable to them, and this shirt helps them do it, by making fun of them. You see?”

“But $70?”

“Punk requires an element of tough love. Admit it! I’m Punk.”

“70 is too much for a shirt.”

When you wake up, you’re comforted by the soft, high-grade cotton of your makeout shirt, which, with some savvy and a little bit of courage, this story’s reader can always acquire for the low low price of $0.00.

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