feet

i have a significant sensitivity to odors. i tried for years to numb this affliction with thousands of newports, but contrary to what you've been told, my sense of smell did not get dulled by smoking. if it had i would still smoke 2 packs a day. on the contrary, i could then and still can smell EVERYTHING and most of the time that just sucks. sometimes it sucks in a way that requires phrases like "do you have those motion sickness bag thingys?

it was the last day of the semester. the women's center and the black women's caucus were hosting a fantastic party to celebrate successes and to wave a loving bon voyage to those of us who were leaving for a while. in hindsight, i see that the party was also a very effective method of getting a lot of people really fucked up. this was the night that some classmates and i invented "topless sockless pool". a game which is not unlike standard pool, but one participates on a team of three or four and all 6-8 players are standing on the edges of the table and kicking at the cue ball with the big toe of their decidedly dominant foot. one is only allowed to step onto the playing surface during her turn and must otherwise remain balanced on the edge. due to the growing number of empty merlot bottles, we declared permission for anyone who needed to do so to grab onto the gigantic wrought iron light fixture that hung conveniently over our heads. it felt like a dangerous place to be, dangling from a chandelier-type thing, but in reality it was the safest we were all night. this was the kind of illumination device an ape could swing from.

my two bottles of wine were of a decent quality and i felt light and liberated by the end of the night. the end of the night turned out to be just a few short hours before the beginning of the morning, and in this case, a three hour flight. the taxi ride was a treat, but no kamikaze cab could compare to the experience that awaited me.

i am not, nor was i then, much of a drinker. one small glass of wine at a time went down with the hors d'oerves and various cheeses until i had comsumed far more than i ever should have. it was all quite innocent, you see. but this is not the kind of behavior, regardless of volitional degree, that the body quickly forgives. particularly the stomach part of the body. i got on my plane, grateful to not have vomited on any strangers at the airport and hoping i could just fall asleep and be home and healed when i awakened. i sat in my window seat and concentrated on swallowing determinedly. i needed more than anything at this moment to avoid surrendering last night's festivities onto the back of someone else's head. true, it would be an hysterical story for others to tell a few years down the road, but it seemed a disagreeable method of introduction at the time. soon after taking my seat, my temporary neighbor found her way to the seat next to me. she seemed pleasant enough. appeared to be friendly and had fabulous hair. the plane was hot and stuffy, as planes are, and this did not reduce the acidic burning in my throat. knowing that i would soon be able to smell other people's hair did not give me a lot of hope for my continued control over esophogeal eruption. i tried not to focus on my full awareness that once the door was sealed, all of the air i would take into my lungs would be recycled from my flightmates' respiratory systems. including sneeze by-product. breathing on an airplane always makes me feel like i might as well wrap my mouth around some strangers nose and draw the air directly from their humid lung cavity. today i would have to push this thought far far away from my consciousness.
so as i sat borrowing oxygen and CO2 from the people around me i noticed the feet of my new neighbor. you know how sometimes you can see a pair of feet and just know that they have a severe odor problem if not carefully maintained? i began to worry immediately that these feet had not been well maintained. partly because there was a casualness to the whole package that suggested a lack of priority regarding soap and deodorizing products and partly because the feet were smashed into fake birkenstocks. the kind you buy at payless that are constructed out of what seems to be the recycled sandals of drifters who finally gave them up because they were so saturated with foot secretions they didn't even dry in the sun anymore. the sole was made of cork; a material that has no business trying to be involved in the fashion or garment industry under any circumstances. i worried more when i discovered the permanent divets in the sides of the woman's feet caused by the straps of the birkenstinks. this can't be comfortable, i thought to myself. she routinely takes those shoes off to offer relief to her overworked little feet.
have you ever smelled satan's breath? i think it would be roses next to the horror that was excreted by this woman's feet. and she knew it. i know this because the already colossal stench of foot juice had been veiled by something that had to be sold in a container that had the words "imposter" and "compare to" somewhere on it. if there is a smell worse than sweaty feet wrapped in cork and cheap leather, it is sweaty feet, cork, leather and an aerosol spray that doesn't smell good even when sprayed lightly across the concave abdomen of a supermodel, as it was in the commercials in 1991. how i managed to not throw up on that flight will forever remain a mystery to me. but i will recall forever the panic that enveloped my entire existence. and i will always remember the venomous hostility i held for the woman with the smelly feet. i hated her. i couldn't stop myself from thinking of evil, mean things to say to her. i wanted to push her out of the plane. and i really really really wanted her to put her shoes back on. but she didn't. i curled my body into a fetal configuration, tucked my nose into my knees, swallowed hard every time my mouth began to water in that foreshadowing way, and repeated to myself over and over: i will get through this minute without asking for a barf bag. i will get through this minute... but mostly i hoped that terrible things would happen to this stench-pot and maybe even her family.