"You have a specific smell."
"What? A bad one?" I asked.
"No, it's not bad."
"What does it smell like?"
"Just you. Your smell. I could be anywhere in the world, anytime, and I would know it's your smell. I'll never forget it. It just smells like you."
And then it hit me. Maybe all the men were just temporary, acting as in-betweeners, filling space. But we would mean something to each other. Our encounters would not be wholly casual, devoid of human feeling. We would leave a lasting impression on each other, however tiny. For better or for worse, we would remain somehow embedded in each other's consciousness; in a smell, in a movement, in a look. Nothing ever meant nothing to anyone.
The next morning, we walked all around the city, and then after he bought me two McDonald's soft-serves, he left me on a street corner in the middle of Toronto. We kissed, and the finality of it all surprised me.
I walked back to my condo. It was far, it took me over two hours. I remember thinking the whole way home, but I wasn't sure about what. Random thoughts just floated in and out of my head, strange voices I owned argued about if I'd done the right or wrong thing.
I was restless. I decided I couldn't just go home. I walked into my best male friend Ben's place of work, which was a cafe around the corner.
"Guess who doesn't learn from their mistakes?"
Ben looked up. It was a question worth asking. I was still drunk and apparently, I looked like an insane homeless person.
"You, dummy."
And then we both keeled over, laughing like hyenas.
I haven't seen or spoke to Scott since.
Later that night was Alice's birthday.
It was swelteringly hot. I spent the remainder of the day showering Scott off my skin, and trying to sleep my hangover away. Neither worked.
As I got on the streetcar to Alice's I remember feeling different than I ever had before. I wondered if changes happened slowly but then one day stop, having become complete. I thought that maybe that day was the day where there was no going back. As I walked up her steps, I was pretty sure the change had been absolute; that I had lost my mind for good.
I remember the party being fun. But everything was fun all the time, so it felt uneventful. Fun had become the background for the anxious ticker-tape that was always going in my mind. I decided that routine, no matter how unusual it was, always felt routine. I couldn’t escape monotony.
When you kill time it dies hard.
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