Scent memory
A man sat next to me on the train this morning. It wasn’t a crowded train for a Monday, yet I could feel him pressing his legs into mine with an intense pressure. I looked up from my book (another Alice Munro short story collection…ugh, so the best ever) and was pleased to see that the thigh pressure was coming from the most beautiful man I’ve seen in a long time.
I went back to my book, he went back to reading the newspaper and pressing his leg against mine. Then I smelled him. He smelled like a combination of cologne, soap and and the very fainest hint of cigarettes.
It smelled like college. Late nights, backyards, random houses and cold air. Of standing in someone’s yard, drinking flat beer from a keg, of laughing a little too loud and a little too long. Wearing a constant combo of orange and black, sleeping until 2 p.m. and selling parking spaces on game days. Of rugby games, basketball players and football player parties. The smell of Murphy’s and Willie’s on a Saturday night, the smell of the walk home, holding the hand of the boy I loved.
The beautiful man got off the stop before me, but not without a polite smile. There was no way that he could have ever known that I wasn’t sitting on the train, but was 10 years away from that moment, trying to remember where my story began.
