What’s that smell? That’s where it all starts. Always. You sniff, and you need to know. Some do it better than others. Me, I do it decent. I’m not like one of these guys who can identify every little particle. I wish. But I get a whiff of it, and I need to know. Like now. What’s that smell? I can smell it. Raw as fuck, it floats into my nostrils. All of it. But I can only maybe name part of it. There’s the first layer- these things come in layers, smells do- and the first layer is the pine. That pine nut oil. That’s the first layer, and it sort of lingers there lowest and softest. The smell drifts out from the Pine Barrens, man, and it comes up to you salty and low hanging. It’s the sweetest and it’s got memories with it too. Memories of the long bike rides to the beach, sunburn, and Grandma’s house. All the little five dollar bills Grandma would pull from her purse back in the olden days- even though I’m only twenty you’re damn right I got olden days- well, all those little five dollar bills would always smell like that pine nut oil.
When I feel that scent kicking up, I can touch my fingertips and they’ll stick together a bit like there’s actual pine oil on them. My mouth dries out. My shoulders tighten. Then the wind blows and you can pick up a stronger kick of that sand scent, which is probably travelling with that pine oil all the way up from the coast. The sand is drawn out, real thin. It might not even be there, it might be only imagined. But I can still sense it, and with it a hint of cheap cigarettes and the boardwalk. Only the cheap cigarettes are actually right next to me because Johnny’s smoking while we sit on the bench. But the boardwalk is miles away, so that just must be an association with the cigarettes. They’re real though, I know that, because I’m getting itchy not having one, and I have to pop a piece of gum in my mouth to avoid asking to bum one of Johnny’s. That’s one of the thicker layers of the smell; the cigarettes are. But it’s not the thickest. See cigarettes, they ebb and flow out of the scent. But I bite my teeth and I can tell that there’s sand between them, even though there isn’t any, and I remember hang-overs, and Frisbees, slices of pizza the size of my chest, paddle ball, ski ball, beach volleyball, and then my actual balls shrivel a bit like the way they do in sticky saltwater.
There’s brine in the air too. It smells like the car does post coitus, and it’s warm and it’s calm like the ocean at sunset, not at sunrise, and I want to grab a bite. But then I think of the other day when I was in the gym and was hit with another briny smell. I was crunching out my biceps and this girl comes over decked out in the fitness fashion. She bends over to stretch after the elliptical and I’m just sitting there curling and wham. It hits me. Vagina. Like, I’m talking some sharp cheddar vagina. Not that it was cheesy, just that it was some sharp cheddar vagina. My face nearly snapped off. To my own disgust I cranked out like ten more reps than I normally do. I was horny as shit. That briny vagina smell is fucking disgusting, but sometimes you have to embrace it.
If I’m not mistaken there’s a little bit of brine in the air right now. I get flashbacks to that day at the gym, the subsequent masturbation session that I rushed home to after I left, and to steamy scenes from my ex girlfriend’s old mini van. I ask Johnny for a butt and then I have to hear about how I have weak will power. But I don’t care because as soon as I light up I feel the delights of empty stomachs, grain alcohol, hey misters, and old parties where I always seemed to end up on the lawn.
I would smell like grass the whole next day until I made it into a pool or a shower, or worse, a classroom. If option C happened, I would end up just smelling like body odor and testicles, the reason for which is obvious if you’ve ever been to public school in the late spring or early fall. Anyone unfamiliar with the logic behind this combination in nasty smells can fuck themselves, because I feel no need to further explain or justify such a stench to a bunch of ignorant assholes anyways. Excuse me. Sorry about that.
But yeah that’s there too- the smell of grass I mean. That’s a layer too, that’s a damn obvious part of it. And dew as well. You can sort of smell it already forming even though the sun has just set and there’s not gonna be an honest dew for some time. You can still smell the dew and that’s a flavor that doesn’t really have a weight. It comes with more of a tambour really. It’s a lilting smell. Sort of virginal; spring-like. Reminds me of concerts and being sore after a good game of something.
On the opposite side of that smell is the dust. I think of nosebleeds, and good sharp punches to the face, and getting water thrown on you. All of that is because of a fight me and Johnny had one time that I can’t really talk about without grinding my teeth. Those smells are only the layers underneath, though. They’re mostly present with the shifting of the wind. They’re the rhythm guitars in this jam. The lead is the restaurants out here on Main.
The Cuban chorizo grilling from down the block, the melting cheese coming from just about every open storefront. The onions, and the peppers, and the hint of some fresher herbier flavors. They smell like nighttime and cold beer and sandals and chlorine drenched water from the fountain illuminating your pale ankles with the lights from the bottom of the fountain, which only further confuse your already blurry vision. These are the heavy smells. The ones that you don’t need to guess about. These are the ones that can be determined with one hundred percent proximity and certainty. These are the smells you go to bed with.
But then it starts raining. Down it drips, and clips my bangs, and the top of my dome. Then it runs down sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, bringing spring time into real time. Then it’s all rag time baby, and people are going nuts. Some are dancing. Some are running. All are reacting. Except for me. The smells are gone. Johnny’s gone. “Hurry the fuck up,” he shouts. He’s running to his piece of shit. I wait there. I smell pavement, and street pebbles, and it’s black and there’s an obvious chemical aspect to all of this. No weight involved, no feeling too it, no tambour, or sound of any kind- just scampering- just giggling. Just the acid on the tips of these rain drops. How did I not smell this coming? How did I not recognize this before hand? This is the smell. This is what I couldn’t identify before. Now I remember candles, and salty wet tee shirts that grip my abs and chest and which ask to be chewed on.
Johnny shouts at me, “I’m leaving you dude. I’m not trying to get wet out here. Damn it Jimmy, never mind, come help me!” His windows were down and they’re jammed now as he tries to roll them up. I run to help him. We get them up. We get in the car. There are food wrappers everywhere. Sand in the seats. Cassettes line the dashboard. We bottom out over three speed humps as we pull away out of town. I roll down the window. The rain has slowed to a dull pitter-patter. With the streets wet, my arm gets splashed as we roll through puddles. The streets glimmer when we pass over oil slicks, and we get onto the highway. “You have to be home at any time?” Johnny asks. I don’t. We have nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No plans. “You mind just driving then?” I don’t. We pass by oil refineries, we pass by farms, and we pass by America and all of its great wontedness. We pass by all of New Jersey, and we roll into New York City. Johnny puts in Simon and Garfunkel. The trip in and out of the city takes us thirty minutes. We only went ten blocks up and five across in the city. Traffic.
We had traveled forty miles just to turn around. Johnny drops me off at my house. It’s three o’clock in the morning. We had been cracking each other up the whole night. Singing. Ripping through butts. He cranked the crackling speakers when, “America,” came on. We roared. “Counting the cars on the NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE, WE’VE ALL GONE TO LOOK FOR AMERICA.” In the driveway he grabs my arm, before I’m able to get out. “You smell that?” he asks. I don’t at first. Then I hear him giggling. His face looks like it stalled out. Then it hits me. The sound comes first. Then I get it- right in the face. Then the smell comes too. It’s vile. Putrid. It’s a fart that’s got weight, it’s got tambour, it’s got texture. I can touch it, I can taste it. “Smells like America,” he says. I laugh. But whenever I smell that fart again I know it will smell like tonight. I close the car door behind me. I still feel Johnny’s hand on my arm even though he’s pulled away. The rain has stopped.
I get to the garage door. The rubber buttons on the touch pad door opener feel like spider webs, and bee stings, and tears. Every time after this they’ll feel and smell like far away fires, and farts, and nighttime. They’ll sound like Johnny’s “Cuccaroacha” car horn, and giggling. Never all at once, though. Never with any sense of entirety, or romance, or completion, and that’s what gets me.
