Perfumed

December 9, 2003

When the doors opened up on the subway this morning and a girl stepped in, her perfume washed over me like a flashbang of teargas that, if it didn't suffocate me first, would surely cause the entire car to explode in a department store mushroom cloud. It was the same smell of a fancy girl I once knew. Whenever she'd open the door to her apartment, the smell would pour out like water from a broken aquarium and nearly wash me down the stairs. After I'd leave, the mist would sit at the bottom of my lungs for hours. Who knows, there's probably a few molecules of it still stuck in there somewhere. I had to get off the subway three stops early and walk. I stopped by the Christmas tree stand of some French Canadians sleeping in their camper, and inhaled the pine and exhaust until it had finally pushed out the lingering stench of perfume and memories.

How can people buy perfume from a store and call it theirs? "Chanel No. 5 is my scent." Yeah, you and about a million old ladies. Everyone already has their own scent. And it's free. After inhaling long, deep breaths off the soft, colorless hairs of a belly, I’ve never thought, "She smells like so and so." But when a girl walks on the subway and strangles me with a perfume I've smelled a hundred times, I think: "Get me off of this fucking train."