Category Archives: Transportation

Your body spray really masks the smell of urine

Posted in Humor, Transportation, Written Word by

Hi. Look, I normally don’t do this, but we’re sitting here on this subway car together and I just have to tell you something. This may sound creepy, but I’ve seen you on this train before. Well, many times. In fact, I know you always get on the third car when the 6:19 pulls up because I’m already on it from one stop up. But I’ve noticed you for one particularly special reason.

Your body spray really masks the smell of urine on this train.

This may sound strange, but we’re both leaving the downtown area trying to get home and we don’t know each other’s names, but all I want to do is get closer to you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just the body spray. I mean, you’re positively bewitching, what with your smart fashion sense, biting sense of humor (I couldn’t help but notice the tiny pin on your bag that says, “[Clever phrase here]”), and unbelievably canny half-grin. You’ve got youth, vitality and the playful aroma of lavender and raspberry with a hint of alcohol. Sometimes it’s strawberry kiwi or ocean mist. But no matter the fragrance, when you step through those doors, the putrid odor of the dirty, God-forsaken homeless wretches of this crap city wafts away while I’m enveloped in a captivating artificial scent of peach tart meringue.

I don’t know how to thank you for what you do. You make going through the mundane and dreary seem like flying through the air. Navigating through life’s horrific banality becomes a whimsical dance atop marshmallows and children’s laughter.

Do they make a body spray of freshly cut grass? No. Wait, no, I guess that wouldn’t make sense.

I’m sorry, I sometimes say silly things when I get a little nervous. But no, I’m not afraid to tell you this: I am blanched by your presence. Me, I’m a worthless vagabond; just a lowly mid-level manager at a fledgling dot-com just trying to get by. You? You are this goddess with interminable beauty who has the power to erradicate the stale odor on these upholstered seats left behind by the forgotten pigs of poverty. Your unparalleled redolence makes this train a sanctuary for us who have sat under fluorescent lights breathing in fetid, recycled air all day. I feel protected in the odorous womb you cast upon us.

So please, while we have mere moments left together on this day where everything between us has been changed in perpetuity, where this fool’s audacious words have unfurled in a brief moment of clarity and near child-like abandon, allow me this moment to fully absorb your essence. If I am never to see you again, I will draw your fragrance in and hope your scent abides, if only to forever banish this repugnant urine smell from my olfactory glands. Your beauty, unmatched. Your scent, ambrosial.

Why yes, that is a pocket thesaurus. Why do you ask?