Deodorant

I recently discovered that I can’t get from an Indian style sitting position to a standing position without either getting on my knees or using my hands. I can’t simply rise from the floor, and simply rising seems to be so easy for everyone else. Everyone else is like an automatic pop-up tent, and I’m more like a tarp. It’s probably either a weight or a strength problem, but one friend was nice enough to suggest that the problem is simply balance. Having poor balance isn’t as bad as having too much weight or not enough strength. In a dream I had last night, Graham cried from his crib, which was, as it also is in real life, only three feet from my sleeping spot, and in the dream my abdomen was so weak that I couldn’t lift myself into an upright position. My body was like a banana peel when its banana is gone.

In workout vernacular, the abdomen is known as “the core,” and knowing this, I feel like I don’t want to know anything more about exercise or its vocabulary. The core:  it sounds so needlessly intense. “The core is the soul of the physical form.” That’s a sentence I imagine an inspirational workout book containing.

I was going to write a poem about deodorant rather than a straightforward post. It would’ve started like this:

On the outskirts of a depressive episode,

heading out,

he sent me back in again

with the nonchalant observation:

natural deodorant can’t quite contend

with your stench.

Of course that’s not exactly how it went. He didn’t say, “Natural deodorant can’t contend with your stench.” Leaving Trader Joe’s with two bottles of wine, four avocados, a bag of clementines, two sweet potatoes, and raisin-rosemary crackers, he said, “Do you want to stop at RiteAid for deodorant?” I was the one, actually, who, at least twice earlier in the week, had said, “Natural deodorant can’t contend with my stench.” And probably that isn’t true either. I probably just smelled myself and made a face. Leaving Trader Joe’s, he asked about stopping at RiteAid, and I said, “No, that’s okay.” He and I both recently switched to aluminum-free deodorant—Burt’s Bees for him, unscented Tom’s for me—for Graham’s sake, because Graham is our constant cuddle buddy and we don't want any toxins on us to get onto him.

He greeted Thursday with the following assertion:  “I’m going to drink a bottle of wine tonight.” That was at breakfast, and at dinner he began to actualize his plan. Two glasses into the bottle, we were watching Modern Family, and I smelled myself again. I knew that I smelled, but despite the faces I made about it, I didn’t think that I stunk. I knew that I didn’t smell like Dove’s fresh cucumber scent. I thought I smelled like me; going natural and unscented has been self-discovery at its simplest. I enjoy getting to know myself. Still, each time I lifted my head from my underarm, I’d make an ewgross-face. Why? Well, I mean, there’s a certain expectation that if you sweat and there’s no sweet scent to cover it, it must stink. I was just acquiescing to the expectation, acting. 

So finishing his second glass, he said, “We’ll get you some deodorant tomorrow,” and, having already rejected the offer, I wondered, “Why is he offering again?”

(In this conversation, let X be the stinkiest person we have ever known. X really exists.)

Amy:  I know it stinks, but I don’t really mind.

Aron:  You don’t mind?

Amy:  So I do stink?

Aron:  I can smell you.

Amy:  I smell like X?

Aron:  You don’t smell as bad as X.

Two hours prior to this conversation, I had told him that I sometimes feel trapped in life by love, that I sometimes don’t want to live but always love my family too much to do anything about it. (I'm not trying to be shocking or upsetting. Just honesty here.) So I guess I’m glad that my admission didn’t amount to a bunch of broken eggshells to him. He thinks that if I can’t find a reason underlying the fact that I feel at times in pain emotionally, then my pain can be shaken. And I in fact can’t find a reason, so we’ll see.

This is a story about deodorant and what it feels like when your sadness is regarded as the result of not trying hard enough to be happy, only I can’t describe the emotions involved in the second part or it’ll just prove that I’m not trying hard enough. Well, fuck that.

I’m not that sad, really. I’m like the person at brunch on Sunday complaining about how hungover she is. She’s not really that hungover. A real hangover is debilitating to a degree that makes getting out of bed to go to brunch impossible. A real hangover involves retching at the thought of food, not the seeking of it. If The Hangover were about a real hangover, it’d be a disgusting and disturbing art film. If I were really sad, I wouldn’t be blogging. I'm just telling stories!