Olor

I like the smell of homeless people on the train. Rey will wretch when he reads this. Most of you will, I'm sure. It's not erotic to me, but it's fascinating and nostalgic. It reminds me of horses and goats, of their dung, of the way the dung smells after it rains and the sun comes back out and warms the dung heaps and spreads the oily smell through the air and mixes it with sweat and orange blossoms and brine from the sea. The smells I grew up with as a boy in South Florida.

I know it's not what one expects to smell on a train packed with people all of whom have a place to be but it's the only smell that reminds me of nature. We decompose, rot, pulsate, we attract flies, we're beasts, we're mounds of sod, we're burning leaves we're dying starfish. And we're full of shit. At least I am.

The smell of a dirty body is what life and death smell like when they smash together. It's maybe the scent of the big bang--the universe exploded into being like an overripe cheese that could no longer contain its own gas, which seeded the universe with mold spores and yeast.

To me, the way some homeless people smell is natural, abundant, fertile, vibrant, and so much better than sniffing Armani's latest bottled spritz or a deluge of Donna Karen's sprayable toxicity.