Downtown Y
Nov 27 2023
The smell stuck to you
all day
and maybe the next.
The heavy chlorine.
The pong of bare feet
in dingy locker rooms.
The human sweat and humid heat
confined for years
in that dark musty building.
So much chlorine
it looked like heavy water,
the extra neutron
making the bottom dark
and the lane lines waver;
bacteria
didn't stand a chance.
The same stagnant water
that sat all season long,
simmering
in its concrete vessel.
Where toddlers pissed,
snot-nosed kids
stewed
until their skin turned soft,
and old ladies
in heavy perfume
exuded scent;
the way onions
sweated over low heat
smell no matter what.
The old downtown Y
I went to as a child
learning to swim.
A whiff of that smell, and I'm instantly back;
pinching my nose
on the edge of the pool,
dreading
that first cold immersion.
The new place, though
is light and airy,
and I don't even notice the smell.
Except, that is
for the teenage boys
peering into steamed-up mirrors,
eyeing their peach fuzz chins
and searching for zits.
The young men
with sculpted facial hair,
posing and flexing
after pumping up,
who douse themselves in manly scent
they've been led to believe
will make the ladies swoon.
They will outgrow this, of course;
find a girl
fall in love
and have children of their own.
And when they're old
will choke in the smell
of another adolescent
trailing a cloud of body spray,
thinking back to the pool
when they were callow themselves
and didn't know any better.
Smell
is a time machine,
transporting us back
to those singular moments
of embarrassment and dread
that will be with us forever.
Which persist
the way the stink of chlorine
and stench of body spray
stick to your skin
as if a part of you.
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