Kate Zambreno

At this diner I worked at when I first moved into the city, the spoons weren't greasy but everything else was. The waitresses would set aside their lipsticked menthol cigarettes while going about their shift, spooning out ranch dressing into the little plastic cups for salad, slathering butter onto toast, piling hot plates of steaming food onto their arms, Grecian-style. After a while, the clashing smells settle deep into your stomach and then you can't eat, also known as "waitress' disease."

Sometimes the low-level nausea could build to a stomach-punching pitch, especially when I worked behind the counter. This one homeless guy who did chores around the restaurant would sit on the stool inches away and slurp his complimentary coffee, cream curdled on his beard, grimy fingers wrapped around a cup that would never truly be clean again. He radiated a fetid funk that made me choke back an urge to hyperventilate. My mother would say he stank to high heaven.

We called the nasal offender Pigpen. An aura of filth followed him wherever he went, flies trailing their lord like a bridal party. Actually, I think he was nicknamed Shorty because, besides his odoriferousness, he was also short. Maybe he just reminded me of the Peanuts character. There were all sorts of stories about Shorty--that he was a heroin addict and the heir to a fortune but was disowned because he was gay, or that he would receive the money when he turned forty. I wondered if the first thing he'd buy with the millions would be a nice fat bar of Ivory that he'd scrub all over his body until his skin screamed. But maybe he liked being dirty. Maybe it was a comfortable extra layer of film, a skunk-like defense against disdainful stares. Maybe he didn't notice the smell anymore.

An acutely odorous homeless man the other day reminded me of this boy I once knew. What's funny about smell is the way you walk right into it. The olfactory is the sense center closest to memory, and a strong whoosh can trigger a remembrance of smells past. The boy wasn't homeless, but he was in a rock band, and they tend to cultivate the same noxious odor. Except indie rockers usually have a shower--they just choose not to use it. They're smell rebels, putrid peacocks with filthy hair sticking straight up without the nuisance of product, the kind of dirty boys you have to ask to rinse off like a prostitute does a john before a ten-dollar quickie, the pat-down known popularly as the "whore bath."

The guy I couldn't Brillo from my brain the other day wore his stench like the Salvation Army T-shirt pulled from the laundry pile and stretched limply over his shoulders. He spurned deodorant, concerned that it overpowered his pheromones. You could tell he was there before looking around, smelling like he just got off a Moscow subway. Do you know that musk that lingers on the sheets for weeks and after several washes?

It's not like I'm some Lady Macbeth compulsively washing up or anything. But I like cleanliness. It may not be next to godliness, but it's what I need next to me.

(2003-08-05)

Also by Kate Zambreno

Tip of the Week
The Underground Literary Alliance recently made it to gossip central--Page Six in the New York Post--with news that the writers-advocacy group was featured in a recent issue of Dave Egger's literary journal "The Believer," despite heated protests by the staggering genius, who gave in to his fellow editors' pleas.
(2003-07-30)

Domestic blister
Apartment Guide 2003
(2003-07-30)

Skate on State
Thor Alwald is describing the past two weeks he's occupied the storefront in the Page Brothers Building on State. Part of a city program to allow the public to view the process of making art, the mixed-media practitioner has been billed as the skateboard artist
(2003-07-23)

In Heat
One million hounds afoot in the city... about one dog for every three people
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Tip of the Week
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Hijacking hijinks
(2003-07-09)

Tip of the Week
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In Da Clubs
(2003-07-09)

Tip of the Week
(2003-07-02)

Tip of the Week
(2003-06-25)

Almost famous
(2003-06-25)

It's ladies' night
(2003-06-25)

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