man smells

Man Smells
Holly Hudnall


I sit in a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar, bathed in the smells of smoke and beer
and the hundreds of unwashed bodies that have crammed themselves into this
small space night after night. The Rolling Stones are blaring "Beast of Burden"
from the speakers by the stage, and the distortion makes my ears ring. A
tear in the cheap orange vinyl of the seats is digging into my leg, and I shift
slightly to relieve the pain. My stool is rocky, uneven on the slightly
sagging floor.
I sip my Fosters and stare out the windows at the rivers running down the
street, at the glare of headlights on wet pavement. For some reason, the piles of
leaves that clog the sewer drains depress me, even more than trying to finish
my writing assignment. Rainy nights in November can be cozy if you are curled
in front of the fire with the one you love. If you are in a college dive bar,
drinking cheap beer alone while doing homework, you are practically begging
to be depressed.
I stare at the clean white sheets of paper, trying to show them that I am not
intimidated by their blankness. They mock me with my lack of progress.
I have been in school too long. I'm starting to sound like an academic in my
own head.
A man walks by, on his way to the bathroom. He’s a little unsteady on his
feet, and as he passes my table, I smell you.
I am dancing with you on an October afternoon. Rain pours out of a gunmetal
gray sky, and we dance in the puddles on the side of the street. It was
windy, the maple trees had rolled out a red carpet for us. The water seeps into my
leather loafers, ruining them, but this dancing is so much fun, so
spontaneous, so uninhibited that I don’t care. I am singing “Stars Fell on Alabama” and
you are smiling, with water running down your cheeks and spotting up your
glasses and glistening in your hair.
You look at me, stroke my sopping hair back from my face, tangle your fingers
in the greedy curls that wrap around your fists and cling to your wrists.
The look in your clear blue eyes scares me, so intense and burning and serious.
I love you, you whisper. You are so beautiful, so alive. I love you. You
are everything to me. And then you kiss me and your lips taste like rain, and
I am engulfed in the smell of you and the taste of the rain.
When you let go, I want to run. The weight of your admission is heavier than
the humidity in the air around us and it turns my feet clumsy and sluggish.
I don’t love you. Loving is hard for me. It has always consumed me. And the
nature of consumption demands that it destroy and discard.
We walk to the house hand in hand, and old people look at us on the streets
and smile at the lovers. And because I know it is the last time, our
lovemaking is more frenzied, more heated. I am trying to wring the last of the passion
out before I go.
I picked a fight, as you lay there in my arms, with your head cradled to my
breast like a small child, thinking that in this, that if I pushed you hard
enough, that you would cross the thin line that divides love and hate. The
argument escalates into a shouting match, the neighbors knock on the walls. I push
harder, hurtling accusations at you, bleeding you dry with the tiny daggers
of my pain. When I slapped you, I saw the last of the love die in those
translucent blue eyes, watched it turn cold and angry. You grab your clothes and
slam out the door, and as it rattles in the frame, I know that along with your
love I have discarded another little piece of my soul. I sit, stoic, stony,
emotionless, and listen to your words again as I smoke cigarette after cigarette.
Only later, when I finally return to the bed, do the tears come. I bury my
face in your pillow, breath the essence of you, and let the scalding tears wash
down my face. I burn with the shame of knowing what I have done.
It took days for the tears to dry, and life to get back to normal. I didn’t
change the sheets until I could no longer smell you on the pillows. I pushed
away the regrets and added another coating to the ice that surrounded me.
I stare down at the meaningless words on the paper in front of me. The
Fosters has grown warm under my hand and my cigarette has burned out in the dirty p
lastic ashtray. I take a deep breath and all I smell is the smoke and beer
and the vestiges of sweaty bodies. The sorority girls at the table next to me
cackle loudly, a sound that speaks of cheap beer and cutting comments
And then I notice that the man who smells like you is staring at me
strangely, and his eyes are not blue like yours, but muddy brown. Only then do I
discover why he is looking at me as if I had gone mad in front of his very eyes, as
yet another tear drips onto the paper and blurs the black ink.
10/19/98 10:25 pm
916 words

Man Smells

I sit in a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar, bathed in the ingrained smells of smoke
and beer and the hundreds of unwashed bodies that have crammed themselves
into this small space night after night. The Rolling Stones are blaring "Beast
of Burden" from the speakers by the stage, and the distortion makes my ears
ring. A tear in the cheap orange vinyl of the seats is digging into my leg, and
I shift slightly to relieve the pain. My stool is rocky, sitting uneven on the
slightly sagging floor.
I sip my Fosters and stare out the windows at the rivers running down the
street, at the glare of headlights on wet pavement. For some reason, the piles of
leaves that clog the sewer drains depress me, even more than trying to finish
my writing assignment. Rainy nights in November can be cozy if you are curled
in front of the fire with the one you love. If you are in a college dive bar,
drinking cheap beer alone while doing homework, you are practically begging
to be depressed.
I stare at the clean white sheets of paper, trying to show them that I am not
intimidated by their blankness. They mock me with my lack of progress.
I have been in school too long. I'm starting to sound like an academic in my
own head.
A man walks by, on his way to the bathroom. He’s a little unsteady on his
feet, and as he passes my table, I smell you.
And then I am dancing with you on an October afternoon, while rain pours out
of a gunmetal gray sky, and we dance in the puddles on the side of the street.
It was windy, the maple trees had rolled out a red carpet for us. The water
seeps into my leather loafers, ruining them, but this dancing is so much fun,
so spontaneous, so uninhibited that I don’t care. I am singing “Stars Fell on
Alabama” and you are smiling, with water running down your cheeks and spotting
up your glasses and glistening in your hair.
You look at me, stroke my sopping hair back from my face, tangle your fingers
in the greedy curls that wrap around your fists and cling to your wrists. The
look in your clear blue eyes scares me, so intense and burning and serious.
I love you, you whisper. You are so beautiful, so alive. I love you. How did
I ever live without you?
And then you kiss me and your lips taste like rain, and I am engulfed in the
smell of you and the taste of the rain.
When you let go, I want to run. The weight of your admission is heavier than
the humidity in the air around us and it turns my feet clumsy and sluggish. I
don’t love you. Loving is hard for me. It has always consumed me. And the
nature of consumption demands that it destroy and discard.
We walk to the house hand in hand, and old people look at us on the streets
and smile at the lovers. And because I know it is the last time, our lovemaking
is more frenzied, more heated. I am trying to wring the last of the passion
out before I go.
I picked a fight, as you lay there in my arms, with your head cradled to my
breast like a small child, thinking that in this, that if I pushed you hard
enough, that you would cross the thin line that divides love and hate. The
argument escalates into a shouting match, the neighbors knock on the walls. I push
harder, hurtling accusations at you, bleeding you dry with the tiny daggers of
my pain. When I slapped you, I saw the last of the love die in those
translucent blue eyes, watched it turn cold and angry. You grab your clothes and slam
out the door, and as it rattles in the frame, I know that along with your love
I have discarded another little piece of my soul. I sit, stoic, stony,
emotionless, and listen to your words again as I smoke cigarette after cigarette. I
play Janis Joplin on the stereo.
Only later, when I finally return to the bed, do the tears come. I bury my
face in your pillow, breath the essence of you, and let the scalding tears wash
down my face. I burn with the shame of knowing what I have done.
It took days for the tears to dry, and life to get back to normal. I didn’t
change the sheets until I could no longer smell you on the pillows. I pushed
away the regrets and added another coating to the ice that surrounded me.
I stare down at the meaningless words on the paper in front of me. The
Fosters has grown warm under my hand and my cigarette has burned out in the dirty
plastic ashtray. I take a deep breath and all I smell is the smoke and beer and
the vestiges of sweaty bodies. The sorority girls at the table next to me
cackle loudly, a sound that speaks of cheap beer and cutting comments
And then I notice that the man who smells like you is staring at me
strangely, and his eyes are not blue like yours, but muddy brown. Only then do I
discover why he is looking at me as if I had gone mad in front of his very eyes, as
yet another tear drips onto the paper and blurs the black ink.