"What the Hell Am I Doing Here? is something that belongs on toilet tanks everywhere."
--Sean Carswell, Razorcake Magazine
"The result is a wonderful photographic poem...Excellent."
--Doug MacCash, Times-Picayune
To read an interview with Abram on Bookslut, click here.
100 T-Shirts
...In a fair world my T-shirt would have read SHE CHEATED ON ME so that everyone would know that I was, at best, half-present.
Before I had sex, it was this vague idea to me. Sex. But in the days after I lost my virginity, I walked around thinking -- that guy there, that girl there, my teacher, the principal, everyone is doing it. And I wondered about how they did it, and with whom and how often.
And it was the same after my train wreck while teaching school. I thought about how many people have half a brain working on their tragedies, triumphs and neuroses. And I wanted to tell everyone mine and hear everyone else's.
So that was the idea. I wanted to go to all my usual places, telling the people there the refrain that held half my brain lately, asking what they were actually thinking about. A hundred T-shirts.
For a year I used this project as a way to get my friends to talk about their lives, asking them what their T-shirt would say. And then, when I needed something for my magazine -- I actually did it.
I went to my regular spots, a backpack full of T-shirts and fabric markers and a camera. I told the story of my ex cheating on me, then gave people shirts and took their picture....
