Recount: A Magazine of Contemporary Politics

The Monk and the T-Shirt

By Janelle Nanos | Oct 20, 2004 Print

The subway rumbles below the 72nd street station while a slight Tibetan man quietly uses red, white, and blue clothespins to attach T-shirts to a metal rack. His head is tilted to the side and his shoulder is raised in order to better cradle his cell phone. A few pedestrians pause as they pass, smirking at the shirt designs. “Banana Republicans,” one mutters to himself before continuing his path to the train.

Tenzin, the purveyor the anti-Bush T-shirts, hats, buttons, and “Now I Can Dress Myself” George W. Bush magnets, seems disinterested in their political significance. “I don’t read the papers,” he says, waving his hand at his wares. “I don’t speak English well, I don’t know.” Tenzin left Tibet eight years ago to escape the oppression and civil rights abuses in the colony, which is still currently under the rule of the People’s Republic of China.  He has secured his green card and been granted political asylum, and now spends his days working the Free Speech T-shirt circuit.

“My friend sells the shirts, I don’t know who makes them,” he said. “He just needed someone to help him out, and I needed a job. So I got a job.” The shirts sell for ten dollars each, the buttons for three, the hats for five. He averages between seven to ten sales a day. “Seventy dollars a day is good money,” he said. “I can make rent with that.”

He reaches for his phone, which seems like an appendage to his body. His shock of black hair brushes his eyebrows, making him appear younger than his twenty-seven years. He has a small silver stud in his left ear, which in an instant is covered by the phone. Circling the shirts while talking rapidly in his native language, he shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, ignoring the interested patrons who smile as they pass.

Tenzin came upon selling T-shirts after a series of jobs, most recently working as a driver of a limousine until his license was suspended. He got involved in the T-shirt printing business after arriving in New York, but then moved on to distributing liquor, stocking grocery shelves, working construction, washing dishes in restaurants, and working as a delivery boy. “I’ve worked since the second I came here,” he said, “But it’s always very difficult to find a job. Low salary.”

He’s the only one here from his family, and sends money home to them when he can. But one would assume that at least here things must be better than in Tibet. “In Tibet, I was a monk,” he says with a laugh. He’s not kidding. At the age of ten, Tenzin began living in the Kopan monastery, located in the city of Nepal. He spent his days studying prayer books, hidden behind its secluded walls. “I don’t know how I came here,” he says, shrugging off a question about how he went from Kopan to the least tranquil city in the world.  Nearby, a truck driver applied pressure to his horn, extending the shrill tone for several seconds as if to confirm the distinction. He shrugged, raising his eyebrows at the noise, and evoking a glimmer of his mysterious past from within his dark pupils, he added, “Nobody knows.”

A ringing phone interrupts our back and forth, and Tenzin paces away to a nearby newspaper kiosk.  An Upper West Side intellectual type – white beard, square classes, bald, and wearing a plaid shirt – pauses to ponder the NO ‘W’ shirt, a grin widening across his face. Tenzin looks up from his phone call, but the intellectual glides away without a sale, while telling him, “I hope you sell a lot of these!”

The disconnect is obvious.  As an immigrant working in the streets of New York, unable to even vote in this year’s election, Tenzin is working for change. Literally. From 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily he sits on the cold stone benches that crawl along the outside of the island where 72nd street meets Broadway and Amsterdam.  He says his isolation is not all that different from that of the monastery; he’s alone even when he encounters a crowd. 

But he’s not completely alone. An old man sits across from him in a wheelchair, his mouth agape, and his head wobbling slightly as he follows the crowds with his gaze. Pregnant women, stomachs bulging out of tank tops, waddle alongside sets of nannies tending to little blond children. A few blocks north, Democratic National Committee volunteers stand on street corners, urging liberals to donate time, money and support for the Kerry cause.

“You’ve got the perfect neighborhood,” one passerby comments, studying the “Drunken Frat Boy Drives Country Into Ditch” headline printed on one shirt, a Fruit of the Loom Heavy-T. “These wouldn’t go over so well in the Midwest.”

Tenzin looks through the man and reaches for a cigarette. Sitting on the bench Indian-style, he lights up, and for a second, its possible to see the remnants of his former life. Smoke envelops him like an invisibility cloak; it hides him from the public, just as so many busboys and laborers, undocumented in this country, are able to complete their jobs without so much as an appreciative glance from their patrons. Eye contact is a luxury they can’t afford. For nearly an hour, he sits off to the side, unmoving. No sales are made.

No money exchanged at Tenzin’s table will go to a candidate’s campaign, although it may go toward his cell phone bill. While the votes being cast and the people they elect will have an impact on his livelihood, Tanzin seems unaware that his selling may very well have a small effect.

“Monk life was better,” he said, “It was just read the book and pray. There was no looking for money.” In all likelihood, though, regardless of the outcome of the election, come November, Tenzin will have to look for yet another job.

Back to top