The most interesting and intriguing smell that I have ever encountered has to be the smell of a house in the morning/late afternoon after a wild drinking party the night before. Just thinking about the smell brings back strange flashbacks to past experiences and encounters, specifically of one night had at a house whilst working in Wildwood, NJ as an amusement park supervisor.
It is a strange sensation that one encounters upon waking from one of these late night binges. Upon waking, the eyes open, and they stimulate your brain to respond with a pain which begs of you to not only ingest the rest of your bottle of acetaminophen that you believe you purchased from the boardwalk 99 cent store during yesterday’s managerial shift, but also to imbibe what remains of the 1 gallon jug of water that has mysteriously appeared in the room. You don’t quite know where you are at first, nor do you seek to inquire as to why you have shared your bed for the past 8 hours with about one hundred peanut butter M & M’s, which have broken and been crushed against the weight of your 140 pound frame and stained the navy blue sheets which cover the lower mattress of the bunk bed in your 80 square foot room in the company-owned summer house. You stand up and observe that the food coloring, from said candy being rubbed against your naked body, has caused your skin to break out in a rash that leaves Skittle-like rainbow colored plaques upon your frame. The first smell that hits your nostrils, aside from an ethanol stink that perspires from your pores under the 95 degree conditions in this room being air-conditioned only by wind that breezes through the open double-hung window, is the smell of garlic. This smell is briefly investigated, and the case is closes quickly upon noticing the remains of several left over garlic knots in an open aluminum plate, which rests atop of the white wax paper bag in which it was taken out it. At some point during the previous evening, the knots must have ceased to be palatable, and upon staring at them and inhaling their obnoxious perfume, they continue to keep up their unappetizing behavior. Your mind wanders towards another subject, and you start a new investigation as you look upon the floor, the crouch down to observe beneath the bed, then into the garbage, where nothing but the scent of bile and a yellow liquid are found. You then look upon your dresser, and at the pile of condoms which still lay scattered in the same pattern as the previous night, which leads you to conclude that you did not get laid last night.
Next to the condoms is a bottle of shampoo and a soap bar carrying case, and you remember that it is common courtesy to, not only yourself but to others who you encounter, shower and cleanse your body of the toxins which have been flowing out of your skin for the past hours. Your shower is down the hall, shared with the other people who reside on your floor, and after recalling the recent incident with your trash can, you can only surmise as to what the bath room must look like.
You wrap a towel around your naked waist and hips, gather up your showering products, including the teal scrubbie which came including with the Juniper Breeze Bath & Body Works bath set that you got last Easter, and begin the long trek towards the shower.
It is upon opening the door that all suspicions that you have had that a party was held last night have been held true, and it is this smell that is most intriguing. A collection of spilt beer, which remains on the floor in the form of a substance which can make walking upon the floors painful as you must rip the skin off of your feet as you pry them free of the wood surface whilst walking, of human perspiration from the males and females that wandered aimlessly and drunkenly, of pizza and hamburgers that came at the 4 am rush for food, and of cigarette smoke from the 20 cigarettes per person that were lit and smoked during the shindig. A brief flare of the nostrils might reveal the musty odor of sex, one that would have been stronger had you cleaned some pipes in you bunk bed, but is only faint, meaning that someone got laid last night, but not you, which makes the failure sting even worse as you realize there was at least one skank at the party that you could have bagged.
As you make those first footsteps towards outer cleanliness, a door opens and shuts before you, and said skank begins her walk of shame from your third floor down towards the first floor. She smiles embarrassingly, as you nod your head in a knowingly fashion with a wide grin on your face, as if to say silently, “you dirty Irish skank, you’ll be walking out the same way out of my room within the next month.” As she passes, you turn your head to stare at her sweet ass that is hugged by that sweet tight jean skirt. Your mind re-focuses to the task at hand, and you walk to the door of the bathroom. Just a few steps away from there, you can see the living area, with plastic patio table and all. The linoleum floor is littered with beer and liquor stains, along with ash and cigarette butts. The table has a rather large collection of Coors Light cans, and at one area of the table lies the ruins of a beer can pyramid that some drunken loser (probably you) created for others to worship at and bask in the glory that was He, drunk. The glorious smell emanates strongest from here. Yet, there is an added smell which befouls the room, and your worst fear of its source is about to come true, as you open the bathroom door.
One cannot fully describe the sight that befalls your blood-shot eyes. There are far too many wonderful details about this newly decorated room to capture in word form. You can, however, note the terrible, terrible smell that has occurred when Coors Light beer, Smirnoff Vanilla Twist vodka, and Coca-Cola combine with ridge-cut french fries, hot dogs, and Peppermint flavored Skoal tobacco to form not only the greatest piece of abstract art of the 21st century, but also the most potent odor that your body has experienced since you attempted to see just how strong smelling salts really are. Your body recoils in horror, while your mind attempts to rectify the situation by transferring your focus to a scene in the movie “Swingers” when Mike comments on Trent’s ability to pick up a Vegas waitress by comparing it to the Jedi Mind Trick in “Star Wars”. Your eyes, however, are fixated upon the sheer power and force that some human body has put forth in forcing such a wide collection of substances never meant to be mixed with one another (yet are probably mixed more often than you know) upon the walls, floors, ceiling, and fixtures of a bathroom. You can see the hanging piece of mucous that dangles from the metal trap of the toilet bowl. The mirror above the washbasin is spotted in both yellow and brown colored liquids. The lid to the actual water tank of the toilet has been removed, and the water replaced with a crazy concoction of Curley Q’s and cocktails. You have to marvel at that; Such attention given to not only vomit in the porcelain bowl, but to actually give up on the bowl and just puke straight into the tank that holds the water to wash out the water closet.
A cup that lies, knocked-over, is what clues you to the fact that Skoal tobacco has been used, swallowed, and vomited. The spittle is in a small puddle, not yet mixing with the rest of the vomit, but slowly making its way toward the marriage as the wind blows through the window and upon the assortment of bodily fluids. You can make out the tobacco strands in the toilet bowl, and it may be the very substance that was simply the last straw for this stomach.
The french fries are a strange find, since very rarely have you seen anyone from the boardwalk vomit them up, but the hot dogs, however, are the most notorious food to be up-chucked. About 95% of the vomit you have cleaned up on the amusement pier has come in the form of chewed up chunks of red wiener meat. There was the large puddle found on the back seat of the Pirate Ship, which required 5 buckets of water to clean off. There was the hanging vomit that occurred on the netting below the suspended roller coaster, which came from some person whilst waiting to return to the station platform, splattered upon the guests on the boardwalk below, and gave many laughs to various employees. There was the liquid hot dog solution that somehow found its way into car #23 of the bumper cars, and terminated its service for the remainder of the summer. And then there was the incident at the top of the Giant Slide, where you had first responded to with a bucket of water and cleaning solution in order to clean up the mess of some child who had decided to urinate in the burlap bag and then slide down on it, but then had the situation fly out of hand as the child waiting next in line began to vomit up his hot dog snack into your bucket of water, as well as your shants. Yes, the hot dogs from the local french fry stand were most famous for their inability to be digested, and just another example of that truth is now lying before your very eyes, and your tight clutch of your showering products loosens as you drop them to the floor in front of the door, loosening your towel as well, and letting the rest of the floor see nothing but your bare naked, rainbow dotted skinny ass.
You gather up your belongings quickly, re-wrap your towel, and walk down the hall, and down the stairs to the bathroom on the second floor. Trying to get the image of what you have just seen out of your mind, and the smell out of your nostrils, you are re-assured that everything is ok as the familiar smell of beer, cigarettes, and sweat wafts through the air down the hall, and you are taken back to a time that was much simpler than the time spent gazing upon the third floor bathroom.
