February 15, 2010; The Nose

Happy Saint fucking Valentine's Day. The Mooks gave each other chocolate and I got to watch them eat it.

Mook A continues to yadda yadda but he has become more discrete. The effect this has, though, is that we look and sound like a couple of radicals getting ready to blow up a landmark. However, if anyone was listening—with a device, say—they would hear one of our mind-numbing conversations about things no one but the two of us understand.

There was one that started off with a casual remark. Mine. I was curled up with A and we were watching Antiques Roadshow. He had just come back from his nursing appointment and I said, "You smell medical." He then set about explaining to me what the nurses at the clinic do to him three times a week. "Hey sport!" I said "Too much information."

I thought he would clam up especially since the experts on the show were looking at a set of Clarice Cliff plates. Mook A is a fool for those sissy, over-painted, pseudo-Nouveau gew-gaws. But his heart wasn't in the show (in fact, since I started talking to him his heart isn't into any show or book or anything). "Can we talk for a little?" he asked. I sighed deeply because I saw I didn't have much of a choice especially if I wanted to stay curled up, toasty and warm, in my favourite chair. I said nothing so he went on: "About smells. What else do you smell on me?"

"Desperation," I said.

"Now come on," he said, not falling for it. "Really, what do you smell and how does it make you feel?"

"I told you if we started talking about feelings I'd clam up forever."

"No, I just want to know if smells—mine and the environment and your own, even, make you react or feel differently about a situation."

Now as conversations go, it wasn't the dullest one I have ever had; that would be the one where I met Benjie on the street and he was actually bragging about the handmade coat he was wearing and wanted to go on and on about where the yarn came from and what all the pictures on the coat meant.

So to shut up A, I bit. "Well, I do smell the medical stuff on you and that makes me a little nauseous 'cause it reminds me of that day..." He knew what I meant; the day I had been fixed as they oh!-so-euphemistically call it. I went on, "But the thing that tells me the most about a person is the smell of their sweat. I mean, it always tells me what they've eaten (like Straight Guy is a vegetarian and I can smell that in his sweat) but it also tells me about their state of mind."

"Really?"

"Sweat is almost always about anxiety. It's only exercise sweat that is clean and sweet and smells it. But even with exercise sweat you can sense the insecurity of certain people if they are running, say, because they think they are fat or if, as they're running, they feel stupid in the jogging outfit they chose or think that it's too tight."

"You get all that from a whiff of sweat," he said and I nodded. "But you say sweat is always about anxiety. What about sex sweat?"

"That's the worst. You have never smelled such high anxiety in your life, my friend. That's why dogs might stay to watch the beginning of a fucking but will leave pretty soon after it starts; the smell just gets too intense and unpleasant."

"But what about people who just fuck and enjoy it and have fun!"

"Well, there are people like that but that doesn't mean that the person they're fucking is enjoying it and having as much fun. Sometimes the other person is just pretending. I think you call it 'faking'."

"But how do you know so much about sex if you've only been exposed to one or two households?"

"Oh fuck," I sighed, "a dog can smell fuck-sweat when he's walking on the street. It comes from every window of every house and apartment whether it's opened or closed. The smell is just that strong!"

"Hm."

"And it's all about sweat. Even when people think they're dry, they're not. Their balls and cooters are sweating up a storm. Everything I need to know in the here and now of a person is right there in the sweat. If I know them a bit longer, I can peel their psyche like a grape at a Roman orgy!"

"So we have no secrets," he said, perturbed.

"None. I know everything there is to know about you, the other one, your relationship, the people you have the hots for; and, in passing, you really should try to control your obsession for—"

"—okay, that's enough!—"

"—and I have to ask you, what the hell is going on between you and that tall guy down the street; that flirty-flirty, blushing thing you do—"

"—THAT'S ENOUGH!"

I was having fun now and I snerfed a little laugh. He, however, was not amusing himself which, of course, amused me even more. "I can also tell, every every every time, when you have a boner!"

"SHUT UP!"

I giggled my fucking ass off and he, of course, shut up at last just in time for an appraisal, on the show, of some Spode. Mook A has a pile of Spode which I hope to inherit after he dies...or after I kill him.