Attention menstruating women: I can smell you (1652 hits)
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Submitted by Thor (View user info) at 2005-07-30 20:30:18 EDT
Or at least I think I might be able to. I'm not really sure if it's connected to menstruation or not. But there is definitely a smell some women get, a smell I don't like. It's too rich and queasy, too suggestive of iron filings, of hair follicles and dried flaking scalps, of something sweet but at the same time decayed and stale. Perhaps the abos were wise to segregate menstruating women, to send them away from camp.
This sensitivity of mine may stem from a disturbed childhood. Actually, to be accurate, it was a happy childhood - with disturbing elements. Such as my psychizophrenic older sister's little trick of burning her used sanitary napkins outside my bedroom door. Actually, that's not quite true either. What she *actually* used to do was stand outside my bedroom door straddling a fire, witch-like, so that the heated air passed up her dressing gown and between her legs before it found its way into my room and up my nose.
28 Fergusson Crescent. Just writing the address seems to have some magical power. 28 Fergusson Crescent. That's where I grew up, forty years ago. 28 Fergusson Crescent. At casinos playing roulette, I always bet on 28.
I can still see the little garden, enclosed on all sides by walls and trees and bushes and vines, in precise detail. I can still feel my body pushing past the lower branches of fir trees to get to the dark shaded place where I could climb up onto the wall, still feel the rough edges of the big hollow bricks against my bare legs, still see the silvery snail-trails and spider webs inside the brick cavities.
From the age of seven or so I occupied what had previously been called 'the sunroom' or 'the TV room'. It seemed more grown-up than sleeping on the upper story with my mother and sister, and the room had it's own door opening directly onto the back garden. I suppose I was inspired by my big brother - twelve years older than me - who had left home but returned for a brief stint of living in the garage, which he painted bright orange and shared with his Norton 750 Commando.
My bed in the sunroom just fitted into an alcove that was lined from floor to ceiling on all three sides with bookshelves and books. So every night I slept tightly surrounded by books; grown-up books that I found too difficult to read. But I suspect having those dusty old books above and around me, looming over me in my sleep, may have had some effect on me, may have leaked onto me or leeched into me in some supernatural way. Is it a coincidence that 'spelling' is what we do to write, and 'spells' are the things cast by magicians and witches?
In the corridor leading from the sunroom to the kitchen, immediately outside the sunroom (ie, my bedroom) door, was a big metal grate covering a rectangular hole in the floor. It was about five feet long and three feet wide, with six inches or so of wooden floor on either side between it and the corridor walls. The dull black metal was very thick and heavy and strong - iron I guess - but I preferred not to walk on it, especially with bare feet. So I would usually skip quickly along the strip of wood on the left side.
Inside the hole covered by this medieval grate was a furnace. Getting the furnace lighted was a vivid and noisy procedure. A small hinged trapdoor in the middle of the grate was raised to give access for an arm and hand - initially my father's, then after the divorce my brother's, then my mother's, and finally mine - to reach down into the pit holding a heavy metal rod with a hooked end. The first task was to depress a metal lever that would allow oil to seep into the furnace. This was very tricky and involved a lot of banging and clanging. Then the metal rod was used to open the furnace lid. A torch was shone down into the furnace. When it was judged that enough black oil had seeped in (there was a big oil tank in the back garden) lighted strips of toilet paper had to be lowered through the trapdoor and down into the furnace to ignite the oil. Needless to say, this was rarely straightforward. But it only had to be lighted once at the beginning of every winter, and I think all of us rather enjoyed the drama. All of us except Shandy the dog that is - she retreated to under my mother's bed.
It was my sister's practice in winter to stand above this furnace, legs straddling the grill, sucking habitually on her fingers. Presumably she enjoyed the warmth rising between her legs, but it DID create a disturbing smell, a smell that I would later come, for whatever reasons, to associate with menstruating women. I suppose it's possible that the smell actually did stem from a blood soaked sanitary napkin being heated and dried, or from estrogen hormones sweated out, but it's also possible the whole thing was in my head and it was just her musty old dressing gown that smelled peculiar.
Funnily enough, her habit of straddling the furnace was actually a good sign in terms of her mental health. It indicated she was quite relaxed and not at all agitated. Prowling around her room all night with insomnia (her bedroom was above the sunroom so I would hear her footsteps on my ceiling) was a bad sign. Bursting through my door in the middle of the night and screaming "YOUR MOTHER'S HAMMERING NAILS IN OUR COFFINS" was a very bad sign. Running out of the house to escape the Nazi stormtroopers she saw crashing through the kitchen window meant it was time to call the police for help tracking her down and dragging her into hospital.
My mother was a bit concerned about taking me to M Ward to visit her, but I didn't really mind. On one visit a chap in a locked room got in trouble for trying to stuff his sheet through a peep hole in the door. I remarked to Philippa that he was probably trying to escape, like those people in movies who tie sheets together to climb down castle walls. She seemed to find my theory quite plausible.
Between psychotic breakdowns, which I suspect may be caused by some form of demonic possession, she was the most gentle, patient and intelligent person imaginable. 35 years later, after a lifelong struggle with madness and psychiatrists and mental hospitals and halfway houses, one virgin breast lost to cancer, her appearance ravaged and her fingers deeply nicotine stained from the four packs she smokes a day, by some miracle (and mum's devotion and sacrifice) that gentle patience is still there when she plays with her nephew, my son Isaac. He loves her and loves going to visit her and poor old grandma in their smoky third-world cave of a flat in Sydney.
He is still too young to be aware of social concerns, of whether or not people look weird. All he knows is that Phillipa is nice and kind to him and talks to him and plays with him and loves him. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts - hopefully it won't be ruined when he realises she is something of a freak.
Although to be honest, these hopeful thoughts of love and familial goodwill often play second fiddle in my mind to fantasies of Grandma and Phillipa dropping dead and leaving me a decent whack of MONEY. I certainly don't wish death upon them, I'm very superstitious about wishing bad things on people, but it would make many things much easier - and spare us god knows what awful future dramas involving nursing homes etc. They're neurotic about keeping the flat heavily locked night and day, and are always mislaying keys. With all the smoking they both do, all that lighting of cigarettes, there must be a fair chance they will be burnt alive. An awful way to go.
But not only would it give me financial freedom, it would also be yet another black and bizarre element of my life to write about in a detached ironic voice! Perfect material for the deadpan shock delivery, and for the 'highly disturbed taboo-breaking unknown genius' image I am forever cultivating. And - get this - I could even tie the black smoke and burning flesh back in with the childhood furnace and those smelly menstrual fumes of madness. Woo hoo!
As a small child I was very shy with strangers, but in the sanctuary of my family's bosom was extroverted and always performing imitations and impersonations; my mother's favourite was my traditional Balinese dancing that apparently captured perfectly the spooky hand and eye movements of the women.
There's a compelling English TV series which has recorded real people at different stages in their lives, starting at childhood and filming once every seven years. One of the people that really struck a chord with the audience was a bright eyed and charming child, full of vitality and intelligence, who ended up living alone and unemployed in a caravan. He couldn't fit in. But there was something honest about him.
Sometimes I want to drive a wooden stake through my own brain. Sometimes I want to do wonders and walk on water and heal the sick and conspire with Bob Dylan on the Ancient Secret Project. Sometimes I want to pull myself together and lose weight and get fit and go back to uni and start a new career, but sometimes I think at age 41 I'm already washed up, a weak failure suited only to writing attention-seeking 'wow dude you are one sick motherfucker' rubbish for delayed adolescents to read on the internet while we all rot in our 'strategic' cubicles. Bored at work.
Sometimes I wonder what my father thinks of me. Disappointed? Sometimes I want to stand up like a MAN and smash this stupid EVIL society into dust with the power of my raw anger and my mighty roaring voice. Sometimes I feel sorry for that sweet little boy living at 28 Fergusson Crescent, and the damage that was done to him. Sometimes I remember how much I love my mother and father. Sometimes I just want to be a nice fellow, just want to relax and feel friendly towards other people, feel some real emotions, maybe even cry.
Most of the time, I'm just kidding myself.
User Reviews
Submitted by NOWorNEVER (user info) at 2005-10-13 09:30:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Spacey (user info) at 2005-10-13 09:16:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-10-13 08:52:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is ace. Although I am saddened to learn of your sisters monomamarian situation. I'm something of a breastman.
Submitted by Arthur_Dent (user info) at 2005-08-11 03:09:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2005-08-09 10:54:28 (#)
Ranking: -1
Don'y hang around w/ the bitches much, eh? Thanks for stating the obvious. Thats why they advertize 'odor control' tampax, kid. """
imbecile.
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2005-08-09 10:54:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Don'y hang around w/ the bitches much, eh? Thanks for stating the obvious. Thats why they advertize 'odor control' tampax, kid.
Submitted by Captain_Cool (user info) at 2005-08-09 10:35:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by Arthur_Dent (user info) at 2005-08-06 17:36:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
reading this for free made me feel like I was stealing.
You are SO my nigger.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2005-07-31 07:52:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
mummy's boy
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-31 07:51:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
that's better, shaken off that horrible STD
i'm pleased a couple of people mentioned they found this touching!
i want to try and let myself move a bit more in that direction, as far as my fear of being mushy and sentimental will let me, anyway.
believe it or not, this post and my previous one both actually caused a 'single tear to roll down my cheek'. well, that's not quite true, but they did create some moisture in my eyes.
which is good, as my optomistrist told me i was rather dry eyed.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2005-07-31 07:43:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
though maybe it would be better to just have:
"Lighting the furnace..."
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2005-07-31 07:42:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
lord of the duct, you got me thinking about lighted and lit
both seemed to sound ok to me, but then i worried that maybe lighted referred more to illumination and lit more to fires. but that doesn't really work that well, as the phrase 'well-lit' is commonly accepted, as in a 'well-lit' room.
some googling seems to suggest that lighted and lit are in fact both acceptable past thingos for 'to light'. all the lists i found included them both.
the best advice on the issue i found came from http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/light.html (Paul Bryans 'Common Errors in English Usage'):
"Don't fret over the difference between these two words; they're interchangeable."
I think I will try to follow that advice and just go with what seems to sound ok in a particular context.
"He lit a fire on mainstreet
and shot it full of holes"
for example obviously sounds better than
"He lighted a fire on mainstreet
and shot it full of holes"
But i think i probably prefer 'getting the furnace lighted' to 'getting the furnace lit' in the context of this post. 'getting the furnace lit' to me seems to have more of an outback or rustic ring to it.
Submitted by lordofduct (user info) at 2005-07-31 05:40:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
+1 for many reasons. Good story and yes I can smell that blood too... grrrr! I hated sharing the bathroom with my sisters. That shit stank up the place to high heaven, especially because all my sisters and mother had the knack for getting their period at the same time.
BUT
I'm not usually an English Nazi as my grammar is attrocious! The problem is, "lighted"... who the hell taught you to conjugate verbs?
My other problem is that it...
well it...
errrr... yeah I didn't like that, I'm not supposed to feel you know. Stop that.
Submitted by Boon (user info) at 2005-07-31 05:25:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-07-31 02:17:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Touching without being melodramatic... nice.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-07-31 02:01:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is fucking exceptional.
Submitted by spacemanor (user info) at 2005-07-31 01:05:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i want to be sexy cool
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-07-31 00:47:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you are a fucking genius
http://www.ubersite.com/m/72075
Submitted by scarysmile (user info) at 2005-07-30 22:22:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
B@W
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:52:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I want to use the phrase 'breath of fresh air' but it leaves the door wide open for a selection of tasteless jokes.
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:30:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by mxc_jwebber (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:22:29 (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:08:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:35:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
Or at least I think I might be able to. I'm not really sure if it's connected to menstruation or not. But there is definitely a smell some women get, a smell I don't like. It's too rich and queasy, too suggestive of iron filings, of hair follicles and dried flaking scalps, of something sweet but at the same time decayed and stale. Perhaps the abos were wise to segregate menstruating women, to send them away from camp.
--
Fuck you. This is when they are the most ripe.
Fuck them when the smell like this.
That is man's most primal instinct.
If you can't get along with this, you would prefer hot semen playing space invaders with your tonsils than practicing your aim with a beautiful woman's cervix.
H.O.M.O.
--------
dingbat. Man's most primal instinct, on the sexual front, is to IMPREGNATE women.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hence the fucking.
-----
dingbat. from the impregnation point of view, there's no point fucking them when they are on the rag. they do not ovulate then.
Submitted by mxc_jwebber (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:22:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:08:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:35:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
Or at least I think I might be able to. I'm not really sure if it's connected to menstruation or not. But there is definitely a smell some women get, a smell I don't like. It's too rich and queasy, too suggestive of iron filings, of hair follicles and dried flaking scalps, of something sweet but at the same time decayed and stale. Perhaps the abos were wise to segregate menstruating women, to send them away from camp.
--
Fuck you. This is when they are the most ripe.
Fuck them when the smell like this.
That is man's most primal instinct.
If you can't get along with this, you would prefer hot semen playing space invaders with your tonsils than practicing your aim with a beautiful woman's cervix.
H.O.M.O.
--------
dingbat. Man's most primal instinct, on the sexual front, is to IMPREGNATE women.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hence the fucking.
Submitted by Wiggles (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:13:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ahhhhhhhh I hate that smell. Periods are vile.
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-30 21:08:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:35:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
Or at least I think I might be able to. I'm not really sure if it's connected to menstruation or not. But there is definitely a smell some women get, a smell I don't like. It's too rich and queasy, too suggestive of iron filings, of hair follicles and dried flaking scalps, of something sweet but at the same time decayed and stale. Perhaps the abos were wise to segregate menstruating women, to send them away from camp.
--
Fuck you. This is when they are the most ripe.
Fuck them when the smell like this.
That is man's most primal instinct.
If you can't get along with this, you would prefer hot semen playing space invaders with your tonsils than practicing your aim with a beautiful woman's cervix.
H.O.M.O.
--------
dingbat. Man's most primal instinct, on the sexual front, is to IMPREGNATE women.
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:57:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
if only Committee Member Q agreed with you zak. i could still be in ubermadness, cutting down lowly seeds on the path to glory!
Submitted by zakalwe (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:46:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
shandy, I am genuinely convinced that you are a genius. an intelligence of the highest order. brilliant. crazy.
Submitted by alfakyle (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:39:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was impressive. Absolutely fantastic. Bravo. Encore encore.
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:35:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Or at least I think I might be able to. I'm not really sure if it's connected to menstruation or not. But there is definitely a smell some women get, a smell I don't like. It's too rich and queasy, too suggestive of iron filings, of hair follicles and dried flaking scalps, of something sweet but at the same time decayed and stale. Perhaps the abos were wise to segregate menstruating women, to send them away from camp.
--
Fuck you. This is when they are the most ripe.
Fuck them when the smell like this.
That is man's most primal instinct.
If you can't get along with this, you would prefer hot semen playing space invaders with your tonsils than practicing your aim with a beautiful woman's cervix.
H.O.M.O.
Submitted by alfakyle (user info) at 2005-07-30 20:32:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Their periods attract bears. The bears can smell the menstruation.
You're putting the whole station at risk!