CHAPTER 20
I CAN STILL SMELL YOU
“Suddenly it occurred to me that I’m so busy trying to work out if he wants me or not that I’ve forgotten to clarify if I want him.” Zeruya Shalev, Love Life
Within moments of leaving my naked side, he called me as he boarded his plane to go back to his life, his wife, his 2.2 kids, and his multimillion dollar investments to say, “I can smell you so much that I think you have become a part of my nostril hair.”
He was attractive, fun, and most notably, easy. He had been with countless women that unlike me had required payment for their services, many that didn’t, some from whom he received refunds.
I didn’t care about any of that as our tongues collided and our bodies were given free reign to move, explore, and experience.
Crude? Maybe. But for me, this was not only an escape through my quest at climbing out of the middle, but an abandonment from all of the messiness of jealousy, love, clinginess, and false hopes for meaningful tomorrows. The middle could be so cold and devoid of emotion that I preferred the heat from my own slap in the face, rather than to have to cope with another minute of solitude and perpetual shivers.
Periodically in my life, as I took the time to recount past experiences, I remembered the consensus among the sexes in my life telling me that my behavior was not odd in general, but odd for a woman, more in keeping with a man. So, with this position as “the other woman,” I left my emotions at the door like so many men before (underneath) me had done.
Completely.
Yes, he was married. Yes, he was another one of the people in my world that I was heavily entangled with from a professional standpoint. Yes, it was all the same shit that stunk just as badly before.
Except NOW I was weightless. A brief truce with my middle-doom. I accepted my lot. I knew I was in the middle, but I stepped up and made some demands of my own. The last thing I was going to do this time was beat myself up for something that I gave myself permission to do.
I circled the middle like a boxer would with his opponent, grabbed my “stuff,” and took off for a while.
I had a friend once tell me that as a woman, I was always in the driver seat. I interpreted it more as the seat between the driver and the passenger. Until the Smeller. With him, I acted like I was in charge, like I COULD call all the shots. In fact, I took some lessons from him to throw right back at him.
I didn’t worry about tomorrow and lived in the seconds of the moment. I separated love from all sorts of physical expressions. I didn’t wince when he called to say night to wifey. I didn’t marvel at his lack of hesitation when he gave me my time to call home, whoever “home” was for me at the time. I didn’t try to find meaning with him before or after enjoying him. I abandoned my middle tendencies in favor of carelessness. We sat shoulder to shoulder drinking our night to blacker night. We lay pressed against each other with no greater visions than what could be encapsulated right then, which, ultimately, was never contained.
I would like to launch into an in-depth dissertation as to how this cured my middle disease, my insane need to stay embedded in places and people I didn’t belong. I would love to conclude that my learning experience with the Smeller propelled me to care less about others and value myself more, to truly live for the moment instead of for analyzing the moment.
But why? Just as soon as I stepped off the wagon, I was right back on, with only distant memories of my apathetic detour. I didn’t last long as a free woman.
Why didn’t I? Was it my need to be back in familiar territory? No, I could’ve turned that situation into something like that if I wanted to.
Loss of control by the absence of crowding? Maybe. I truly was free for a concentrated period of time, not bothering with the things that tended to pull me in; those magnetic thrusts from my heavily populated antenna.
But I was used to so much MORE! Heaviness. Complication. Meaning in everything. Circular momentum that afforded me significance.
If I kept myself at the heart of scattered matters, I was indeed significant, and as long as this was true, I didn’t have time to dwell on the lack of importance staring blankly, starkly, and squarely at me.
