Postaday for June 4th: Smell You Later. Humans have very strong scent memory. Tell us about a smell that transports you.
I can tell you about a smell that should transport me but doesn’t: Twizzlers. I’m not talking any old red licorice, or Red Vines. I’m not talking about the cherry pull-strand style Twizzlers either, or the multicolored ones, or those cherry nibs. I’m not even talking about the quarter pound or the half pound bag. Heck, let’s get real specific: I’m not even talking about a one pound bag of strawberry Twizzlers unless that one pound bag of strawberry Twizzlers is on the discount shelf at Albertson’s for just a buck because they’re trying to move old stock the day before it expires.
Every time my wife goes out of town, I end up with one of those bags. Sometimes she buys them for me and hides them around the house, ’cause she knows I’ll find them. It’s too bad Jinny Hoffa wasn’t buried with a bag of Twizzlers, ’cause I would have found him a long time ago too. But as often as not my wife doesn’t buy me the bag, and I get one myself. It’s freaking surreal. We wake up, I toss her suitcase into the trunk, drive her to the airport, drop her off at departures, give her a hug, watch as she walks into the terminal, and when I turn around to get back into the car, I’m in Albertson’s, standing in front of the BOGO shelf, fat bag of Twizzlers in one hand, the other hand in my back pocket, grabbing up my wallet.
Self check-out line. I’m scanning the bar code, then swiping my credit card while tapping through instructions on the touch screen. I’m in the car and half way home and the bag is open and one Twizzler’s in my mouth and I’m chewing furiously, another Twizzler pinched between my upper lip and my nose, a candy mustache like goofy hipster nightmare porn star perverting my blood sugar and will to live.
You’d think that pungent sugary strawberry smell, that cloying noisomeness would take me back to every other time I’ve sat in front of the computer, playing some god-awful video game while masticating a waxy red mess at about a hundred calories per second. You’d think I’d remember the commiserate queasiness, that sickness that starts a sour patch in my gut and works it way up to squeeze my poor withered heart a few times before resting firmly and greenly in my forehead. How I’m ruined for days, me the next day with my Twizzlers hang-over, crumpled up in my easy chair like I’d been discarded there, a cup of tea cooling next to me and something stupid and dark on the TV.
But no, I never remember. The smell does nothing to me. I wish it would. Even now, concentrating, I can conjure up a whiff of those disgusting sucrose sticks, those corn-syrupy stomach-punchers, those red-number-five bowel-busters. And even though I know what it does to me, ruining my weekend, making me wish I was an alcoholic or a junkie instead…
…I’m thinking about how my wife has to work this weekend and maybe I’ll go get a bag.