Nausea

Wayne got my address from me at the high school reunion. Why did I go in the first place? But of course, I didn’t expect any of those bastards to show up in my hole. Piles of dusty newspaper, packages of ramen and my collection of wigs covered the floor; into this Wayne charged in, in his take-no-prisoners three-piece suit. He was the lawyer for some celebrity magazine, and gave me all the sleazy details of his work, sitting on the cardboard box where I kept my books. So this was my “artist’s studio”! I lied, of course. Wayne lit a cigarette and looked out at the long line of projects that stain the edges of the city. This was where I was living, dark cavity in a row of rotten teeth. And here was Wayne patronizing my pants off. I couldn’t get rid of him.

"If you ask me,” he was saying, “This place suits you. When I look inside your mind, I can see some place like this.” He smiled, picking up a bright red wig from the floor. I didn’t know if he meant it as a compliment. “So, you too have a thing for wigs, eh?…” he winked suggestively at me. Fearing some murky implication I wasn’t aware of, I burst out, “No, not at all!… I tried to make a few bucks by selling these things for some seedy company… a pure swindle! I was a fool…” I kicked up one of the innumerable hairballs from the floor. It spread like a pair of wings and settled slowly onto the bed.

Wayne was inquiring deeper into the wig scandal when I noticed a faint smell in the room. "What the hell is that?" I sniffed. It was sweet and faintly sickening, like rancid peanuts.

After writing down the phone number of the wig company in his organizer, Wayne asked me about my art. I told him in detail about a “recent” visit to a gallery. It actually happened more than a year ago; I pretty much gave up trying to sell my work after that. But Wayne was trying to make me feel better, that bastard. "I have to tell you,” he said, “I’ve always admired you. You keep it real simple.” He looked around my wretched hole, the board stacked on cardboard boxes as a bed, the Safeway calendar hanging on a nail to the door. “Yeah… I mean, I spend all my time taking care of my new car and my mortgage and girlfriend and loans. It keeps me busy. But you probably have more time to enjoy… the simple things.” He smiled again.

He kept talking, but I stopped listening. Peanuts, grease, sweetness... what was that smell? Was it coming from Wayne? He leaned closer to me. I could feel his breath on the tip of my nose, and it was as if he'd been roasted in chocolate, then left to decompose for a week. It made me think of the last time I saw Ruby. That was almost a year ago... I took her to a cheap Chinese place around the corner. She was explaining to me her reasons for wanting to become a vegetarian, when we walked into The Golden Dragon with all its pig carcasses roasting in brine, its headless flock of ducks dangling by their necks.

We sat down, and ordered among other things pork sung... a fine wooly fluff cooked in soy sauce. It smelled sickly sweet, like a chocolate bar, like old peanuts... she asked me what it was. "This?" I took a wad of the stuff between my chopsticks, "you've never heard of pig armpits? It's a delicacy where I come from."

"That's it!" she left. When she came back out of the restroom, she slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Hey, what's the big deal?"... She started to walk out... "Ruby!” I shouted, “Look, this is as humane as Chinese food gets... to take the armpit hair you don't even have to kill the damn pig!" but by that time she was out the door already. She probably never touched meat again.

Wayne was looking at a sketch of mine I’d dug out of the ruins. “This is first-rate stuff!” He said. The smell was driving me crazy. Wayne watched me nervously as I sniffed in the cracks in the walls, got on my knees and sniffed the floor, and lifted the wooden plank off my “bed”. “I’m telling you, I don’t smell anything…” he started to say.

But I grabbed his Italian suit and buried my nose in it.

"Oh god!” I screamed in his face, “It’s you! You stink!"

He fell back onto the bed and stared up at me. My right hand started shaking and I hit it with my left hand. But it only stopped for a moment and started shaking again. Then the left hand started shaking too. Then the shaking moved up to my elbows and both my arms started waving back and forth. I laughed, “I look ridiculous.” I said, “But it’s your fault! I can’t help it, that smell, your stinking cologne! You know, you know… It’s driving me nuts…”

He laughed nervously. "Hey, I better get going…” he pulled himself up, glanced at his watch as if at a protective charm, and began to back off. “I have a business meeting to attend..." and he made for the door.

I was laughing so my throat burned. "You pussy!" I yelled after him, "I know you think I’m poor and crazy, but you're the one who smells like crap! Get rid of that goddamn suit! Burn it! It smells like crap, and so do you, even with all your money and all... Get out! Get out!"

After that housewarming, I was drained of all feeling. The smell was still in the room, how did he get it on him? I opened the windows, and fell on my bed. The smell swirled around me, I spiraled into sleep.

Floating on the Dead Sea… lukewarm waves... thick as puss. The sea heaved. I bobbed on a gigantic pimple that was going to burst...

A desolate shore, strewn with flaccid, exposed bodies, the apocalyptic whorehouse... Bodies everywhere. Warm skin and flesh seemed turning into greasy, chunky ooze. In a reddish glow, a pile of interlocked arms and legs decomposing. That rancid odor, filling my head all night long, woke me up with a terrible headache. The smell was still in the room, even though I kept the windows open all night.

How can I live with this smell? Damn Wayne! I threw on some clothes and went outside. It was gray and breathless in the street: the kind of day there must be before the end of the world. I walked a few blocks... everything seemed wrong somehow, off balance... the people I ran into looked yellow, cancerous. The kids waiting at the bus stop, the old people walking their dogs, the pigeons pecking in the gutters... it was all wrong... Like looking at the world through a mold-green filter. It made me sick. From the rooftops, from the gutters, from the mouths of women and children, the same smell snaked into the air. It asphyxiated me... there was some epidemic in the city... The air was poisoned!... maybe I'd hear planes flying overhead soon…

What was wrong with all the people around me? I looked at their faces, their morning smiles... no one seemed to suspect anything but myself. I turned a corner and put a coin in a newsstand. There must be a chemical war going on... I fully expected to find on the front page that China or Iraq was dropping nerve gas on us, but no! no mention of any war: Just refugees doing what refugees do, that is, starve. Kids doing what they do, that is, gun down teachers... everyday things...

Then I struck myself on the head... but of course they wouldn't tell us this kind of thing! If our nation was doomed!... they'd quarantine this area, let all of us die off, so whatever virus is infecting us wouldn't spread! A coverup! I looked around to make sure no one was looking, then put the newspaper to my nose. The bittersick smell was concentrated there. Just like I thought...

I had it all figured out... I was doing things all wrong, running out into the streets like this. I should be tucked away in my room, so I get as little exposure to the virus or poison or whatever as I can... out here I'm a sitting duck! I ran madly for my tenement. A pretty girl in a tank top turned a strange look at me. “Run for it!” I yelled at her.

"What?"

"Do you smell that in the air?” I said.

She sniffed. "I don't smell anything.”

“It's not safe out here.” I told her, “I know I look like a bum, but really I'm not as bad as I look... I used to go to college, in fact... I'm... an artist of sorts... anyhow believe me, something terrible is going to happen out here!

“I just can't bear to see a pretty creature like you go like that.” I told her, “You’ve got to come with me. We’ll go to my place and I’ll put sheets over us, so the poison can’t hurt us. Come with me, I can help you..."

I held out my hand to her, full of hope. She blinked and looked down for a moment; I thought I saw a gleam of bashful trust in her eyes…

But she looked me in the eyes, with a bottle of pepper spray in her hands. She let me have it...

I managed to crawl back... I had a little vision left in one eye... Bitch! what does she know of the terrors to come! When the Chinese or Russians or whoever invade, I alone will be safely hidden in my sanctuary while horrors rage outside. I felt so special... I hadn't been so proud of myself in a long time, and I'd never been so glad to see this my bear cave.

Shut all the windows and stuff the cracks with toilet paper, same for the door. Shove everything against the door, all my cardboard boxes and my painting easel, to barricade against the North Koreans. Then I was set. I jumped on my bed and pulled two sheets over my head.

I sweated like a pig, since it was a hot day, but I wanted to hold out as long as possible against the gas. I huddled into a ball under the sheets, breathing as little as possible... but slowly, slowly it crept up on me... the same smell, sickeningly sweet, like chocolate, like spoiled meat, like excess fat, like rancid peanuts... like Ruby in the pig's armpits... it concentrated in the narrow darkness. I curled up tighter and still it was there, there!... I started to realize something… where was it oozing from, from the creases in my skin? From my arms? From my chest, my crotch, under my tongue? From the hairs in my nostrils? All of a sudden I opened my eyes in the dark... I'd have to keep on smelling myself, all the time!