Thank You for Choosing Deoderant.

The only thing worse than smoking was not smoking.

He fidgeted with the cigarette, moving it to the ends of his fingers. Agitation, agitation on every side, but the nicotine helped. He liked feeling light headed, exhaling thoughts as his armpits exhaled sweat. Walking down the stairs, worrying about the nuances of passing eye contact; his underarms felt like little bogs. In his eighth grade natural science class, his teacher (who made him nervous) told him water was the basis for all of life. His armpits could develop a little ecosystem of their own with the constant stream of life potential he provided. He had provided water and farrow ground, and his flaky white deodorant could serve as fertilizer for the bacteria that was sure to come and breed. A bacterium evolved to challenge the antiperspirant’s claimed abilities. Little fat bacteria, squirming when he closed his arms together too tightly to hide the pit stains. He did not like to think of them burrowing in or languidly sleeping on his skin.

His hands shook as he scraped a few grains of consumed paper off the tip of his cigarette. The door creaked behind him.

She came out.

This came as a surprise.

 She smoked? Apparently. Some of her dark lipstick stuck to her white paper as she pulled it out of her mouth and exhaled forcefully. He was painfully conscious of his bogs. He hated this narrow brush of eye contact; he would slightly look at her, she at him. She was beautiful of course, which only meant he had to avoid conversation even more than usual. The only thing more uncomfortable than conversation was pity conversation. If only she didn’t smoke, if only he had come down for his break at a different time, if only he had picked the exit on the other side of the building.

A man walked by them on the city sidewalk. He had a heavy coat and scruff conglomerated around the bones in his chin, like dark pencil flecks. If it’s cold enough for coats, you should not be doing what you’re doing, he told his busy armpits. Mental tricks never work on physiological swamp lands. The man eyed him hungrily, obviously, but he kept walking. The plans this man was making…

In his apartment tonight he would come back to find the man sitting on the kitchen table, knife in hand.

“You have more than this?” The coated man would ask, sitting regally among tousled papers, a handful of bills in his hand. The lamps would all be tilting or smashed and the man would sit in a corner that was juxtaposing light and darkness, a perfect split down his face.

“In my wallet.”

The intruder would not rise from his position, but the force of that gaze alone would force him to open his wallet and shed his money, his credit cards, anything he might possibly have and in that moment his life would be gone. But the man would not be finished; he would approach with the knife…

What was that, out of the corner of his eye, was the scruffy man returning now?

Worse, she was talking to him.

“Long Monday, hm?”

 She pursed her lips after each word. She spoke with force and authority, and punctuated her phrase with the “hm” like it was the last staccato in a phrase. It was all a blur to him, the details only came back to him later. Oh, the multitude of details in sharp Technicolor brightness.  He closed his armpits, and it seemed like his body jumped before his mind and he said

“Uh, Thank you.”

 She looked over, quickly, a question of a question fell between them but then she crushed the remains of her cigarette and up the stairs she went.

Thank you. The words resonated in the air behind her.

Conversation was not a part of life for him, so natural and easy like it was for others. He could not just walk up to someone and say something, the idea of it made him laugh. Well, almost laugh. He dreaded checking out at the grocery store where he would probably be required to say something… but for the people he sometimes caught himself watching it seemed like walking or breathing. Laughter and intonation and words flew off their lips like they were waiting to be let out, while they sat like rocks in the bottom of his stomach. He had been forced into speaking against his will and look what had come out and now he would never forget.

After that, he thought about her from time to time, if she remembered that thing he had said, that awful terrible slug that had crawled out of his mouth and sat on their conversation. It did not even matter as much as the fact that he remembered, that he would always remember, and it sat hot and heavy on him. He would be calmly watering plants or typing documents and up it would come in his mind, making his hands to grow little bogs of their own, sprouting moisture, watering the plant and lubricating the computer mouse.

He wanted to die, he wanted to be crushed by some terrible illness, he longed for a car accident. A sudden move, a global calamity, a job transfer, anything, anything so he would not have to see her again and feel so completely brushed aside. She was beautiful and confident; she walked in heels with assurance. She was a tiger woman and her mind was sharp like a knife. He thought that maybe if they did not have this terrible thing between them he might like her; she did not talk much and her very differences were the kinds of things that might comfort him. Knowing that there were people who were brave and calm made being fearful and torn easier sometimes. But that terrible thing made the thought of her ugly and hot. The drive to work that was before only low buzz in his stomach and a tremor in his body had become painful, painful, painful. It started to grow milder as life numbed him to his own fears as it had before, and would again.

To his surprise, he felt sadness growing where there was no sadness before. She never looked at him and she never talked to him, since that day. He could have liked her, maybe. But she was like a knife and she did not look back. He had his chance, once, to say something that might amaze her and make her think that he was brave and knife-like, too. But now all she could see was the bogs and the faltering thank you’s, if she even saw him at all.

He wanted to die, he wanted to die.

But each day, he woke up and went to work again.