Smell-O-Rama (or "BRING ON THE FUNK!")
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 8:46PM Despite the U.S. Empire collapsing all around us, Simone and I love our new environs of the Northeast, particularly our groovy loft by the river.
But with all blessings, joy and contentment in life, someone or something is always there to take a steamy, brown dump on it. Scatological imagery aside, harmony and pleasure often seem too eager to cede their psychic space to the banal and awful.
The rain on our parade, the fly in our ointment, the elephant in our room (or loft), as it were, is a strangely, ever-changing potpourri of aromas whose source is as mystifying as the riddles of the Sphinx.
Some days it smells strangely of unchanged diapers. The next, curried lamb. Weekends tend to be a fetid combination of cigarette smoke, pot roast, lemon cleanser, wet dog and powdered soup mix.
Simone has a theory that an heiress to a perfume fortune (Bare Essence anyone?) was strangled in our foyer and each evening, at the stroke of midnight, her spirit returns to avenge her untimely demise and concoct the following day's malodorous bouquet.
I'm not so sure about the possibility of entities from the netherworlds coming back to wreak havoc on my olfactory glands but I am quite sure, early one morning, I heard Richard Burton and Liz Taylor arguing over "White Diamonds".
Regardless of the reality of phantoms or haunts, the odors emanating directly above our front door are anything but imaginary.
They have even taken over our usual pleasantries upon arriving home, creating a fun new game for us. No longer do Simone and I greet each other with a cordial "Hello", "Honey, I'm home" or "How was your day?". We now enter the loft, flare our nostrils, nod a few times and take our best guess as to what the fragrance of the day is.
"Rotted pine with petrified sap?", queries Simone.
"Dahmer's refrigerator?", I counter.
"No, less putrid. Fran Lebowitz's lung?", she offers.
"A Bombay brothel after 'rupee night'?", I gag.
"Rosie O'Donnell's fat fold!", she states proudly.
'That's it!", I concur.
We're house hunting now and will soon move out of our garden of mephitic delights. I almost envy those that will proceed us into that den of rotating funk. The mysteries they will encounter, the puzzling putrescence that awaits them, the foul essence of "home" that will shape their days.
They may not have effused from us, but they were our smells damn it.
I'll miss them. I know Simone will. I'm not so sure we can adapt to fresh air again.
Note to self: Seek a musty house.
Reader Comments (4)
If your still living in Philly, there will be no "fresh" air so no worries
Are you one of those elitist New Yorkers who turn their nose up (or away) to the City of Brotherly Love?
Actually, it does smell a little.
But its got a heart of gold (and arteries of cholesterol and fat).
uh,... y'all know how we wuz so eager to come up for a nice long fun visit with all y'all up there in yer new digs?... uh,... yeah,... well, it's just anymore we're just so damned busy... this year.
(yup, they still talk like that down here.)
Strange is your language, eddditor, and I have no decoder. Please won't you make your intentions clear?
Get your asses up here hillbilly! The weather's fine and the cool stench of Jersey landfills is beginning to blossom in the air.