Scents Memory

If I could put time in a bottle....

September 8th, 2001

The weather was terrific. It was warm without the balm. The breeze was slight; warning you of a "light jacket evening" to come. TallBoring Gary and I packed a lunch and walked all the way from Murray Hill to Battery Park City. We found an unpopulated stretch of grass surrounded by blooming bushes and a few large shade trees. In front of us mostly sky and the buildings of Jersey City. When we laid on our backs the Trade Centers stood so tall you could see them without arching your head back. We hadn't been dating for more than two or three weeks yet. The conversation was never difficult between us, but it was never flowing either. Per his suggestion we both packed a book.

Gary always smelled of nearly nothing. His scent so light and airy it was as if he bathed in Woolite and dried and powdered with Snuggle fabric softener. Nonetheless, on September 8th, 2001 I began to smell Gary as we soaked up the late summer sun. Not just his neck, but the small dent in the center of his chest where maybe a dozen hairs lived. The downy hair in his armpit. I smelled his forearms and felt their smoothness. The smell that resided on either crease of his nose. I reached up his shorts and stroked his inner thigh and then smelled my hand. It turned me on. It began to turn him on. He eventually took the hint and threw down his copy of the latest Alan Hollinghurst novel. We kissed so sensually and so tenderly. We caressed with secret passions. And I smelled him. He smelled so real. So perfect. So new. So clean. I kept smelling him. As I smelled him I become almost ferocious. I was making a memory.

"Your smell, it's everything. It's perfect. It's barely a smell yet so fragrant. It's shampoo and sex. It's soap and slutty-ness. It's sweat and tears. It's salt and sweet. It is here with me but yet it hardly exists. How is this possible? Am I crazy for loving this?" I thought to myself.

Eventually, Gary had to pry me off of him. Although, he did have a huge grin on his face and a smile stretched across his shorts. I am sure he didn't expect me to have this side to my personality. We finished the afternoon fighting to keep our hands off of each other. We strolled back to his place and rolled and frolicked among his sheets and pillows; all which radiated his scent.

Years later I would be in need of some basic moisturizer while vacationing in California. I stopped at a SaveOn picked up a bottle of Lubriderm (the one with purple writing). The instant I applied the lotion, butterflies burst from their cocoons in my gut and my testicles rose up with anticipation.

I am a complex man who appreciates the simple pleasures of life.

But, I would love to put the smell of September 8th, 2001 into a bottle. Just to have forever. To return to as a reminder, when I feel I can't find the simple things to love and adore in another man.