Perfumed with Obsession

Every year, my allergies get worse during a certain time of the year, which is usually the time when winters start to recede. I don’t exactly know what I’m allergic to, but every time I broom my house or get stuck in a traffic signal longer than 120 seconds, the smoke and the dust start to get to me. It results in a mild-to-headache triggering sneeze-fest and makes my palms itchy and sweaty. I also react very badly to men’s strong-smelling deodorants. 

But his fragrance was different. I could tell he’d taken pains to apply it because the scent filled the entire living room the moment he entered my home for the first time. I liked it - not just him in my bed beside me, but the scent that lingered in my sheets long after he left. I made no secret of how incredible the scent was, and he told me it was a Calvin Klein fragrance. I have the hots for good-smelling dudes, bite me.

We snuggled in my tiny bed in the shade of my bedside lamp, and watched Disney’s ‘Soul’. Later, we did what he had proposed on our chat the previous day - talk and cuddle with The Weeknd playing in the back. As Save Your Tears comes on the speaker, he chirps up, “This is my favourite song from the album”

“Mine too!” I chime in.

Then, he asks me why I wasn’t at work on a Monday. I told him I needed a break to deal with some things. He asked me what things. And I told him the what and the how of my misery. He let me cry. At that moment I realised what a big prostitute of feelings I was being by revealing too much too soon, but even if he was weirded out by that, he didn’t show it. He was too kind.

Days later, he invites me to his place. We pass time watching the Dark Knight while cuddling in his bed. This time, without clothes. He tosses me the perfume he wears.

“This is what you liked so much the other day”

The fragrance is called Obsession

 

He then asks me if I’d want to go out for a smoke. As we walk outside his house, buy a Marlboro Advanced and a Benson Light and head back, he hands me one of his ear pods. 

Save Your Tears starts to play.

“I don’t think earpods were ever a good idea - before this moment,” I tell him as I throw him a gigantic smile.

He smiles back and lights his cigarette.

Another few days pass and one day I find myself thinking if I’ve started to use him as an emotional crutch of sorts. He calls me up, and after trying to contain myself, I don’t. I tell him I’m not good for him. That I might get attached to him. Which both of us agreed to not wanting to happen. He comes over.

We kiss. I lie down beside him. We talk. I lighten up. He leaves, promising to meet me at night.

He comes over at night. We kiss again. We talk. For the fifth time now, he tells me his knee got fucked during his football game and yet hasn’t decided to get it checked. I’m on my period and we lie down beside each other, half-naked, and smoke a cigarette. He asks me, “What’s up?”

“This,” I say as I grab his still-stiff dick.

He laughs. Then asks, “what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing” I answer

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not. I’m just here in the moment, with you”

We kiss again.

He leaves in a few months. I’m a little worried. But mostly, I am grateful. I don’t know what shall transpire in the coming days, weeks, months. Maybe he will wither away like his fragrance from my bedsheet; maybe not. But come what may, I promise to live in the present, steal away every moment of beauty I get to spend with this human, and maybe in the process, heal. And keep moving.

“A rush at the beginning

I get caught up, just for a minute

But lover, you're the one to blame

All that you're doing

Can you hear the violence?

Megaphone to my chest

Broadcast the boom, boom, boom, boom

And make 'em all dance to it”

‘The Louvre’

Lorde