Stinkfoot

The gym is quieter today, now that April is here and people have abandoned their New Year's resolutions. There are more than enough treadmills, and yet the round guy with the rattail of gray hair dangling down his neck chooses one right next to me. Even if you were three down and across from the entrance, through which a spring breeze sometimes blows, anyone could smell him still. I admit I don't shower before I come to the gym. But what would be the point? I slather on a layer of Speed Stick, just in case, but even without it, I could never approach the level of stench this man exudes. She's always smiling as he trots away, perhaps finding the power of his olfactory reach amusing. Perhaps it's funny to him that we all must breed inin his pugnacious fumery, and none of us can escape or even have the balls to react. It's a smoldering, almost peppery smell, a hint of moldy orange peel and vinegar rounds out the bouquet. And something else that reminds me of Tijuana. The way the dust clung to you. The smell of bad meat cooking. Morning-after tequila breath and sour milk. Wet dog. But it smells good to you when you are clinging to life suspended on the wire of pain. I held that duffel bag to my chest like a child's teddy bear. Breathed in the sweet scent of the stained and mildewy canvas. The movement of the bus had brought team met toward through me like bullets. But I didn't let go of that bag. The entire ride, someone seem to be carrying a basket of fish, perhaps hundreds of baskets of them, the briny smell hanging like Christmas lights around our heads, cut briefly sometimes by the greasy smell of sun-baked scalp. So many heads, all bobbing and jiggling as the road would have them. In Nogales, I stepped out and vomited against an aloe plant. The hotel at which I stayed was overrun with cats.