A Taste of Forgetting

*Originally written Sept. 26, 2009*

You sit there, on your bed, laptop covering the front of your thighs, the warmth soaking through the blankets, and it hits you. Smell. Taste. Taste more than anything. It fills your mouth, and its source seems to be your soft palate, way at the back, like it's dripping from your nasal passages, liquid through a sieve. It's unmistakable, this taste of a smell. You know that its origin is nowhere in your physical vicinity, but instead bloomed and diffused from the unconscious mind that isn’t really aware of anything else that’s going on. Your body is seeking to remember while you are trying to forget. And when you try to remember, in your desperate attempts to reconnect with that which is no longer there, your body conveniently forgets, or chooses ignorance. But there is no escape when your body is in charge of things. And so you sit there with this taste in your mouth, and it forces you to remember the source.

It's his place. You must have absorbed it into your skin, even though it's been three weeks since your exposure. Long incubation period, it seems. It reminds you of the couch where you both sat too close together so that the only thought, the only action that occurred to both of you was to get closer. So you did. But it wasn’t close enough, you remind yourself. It was only the surface of closeness, and you wanted to go deeper before he was ready, and he couldn’t handle the pressure. Maybe that’s why he left. You introduced the idea too soon, no matter how gently. A cage is still a cage, no matter how slowly it is dropped over the captive. But there’s more to remember because the taste hasn’t disappeared yet. Go back.

There was the bed with the squeaking wooden frame that actually groaned more than squeaked when you got out of it. The duvet that you tried to sleep under that night, but couldn’t because the heat was so bad, and so for half the night you slept uncovered, bare breasted, only in your underwear, wondering how the hell people learned to sleep together, while you were practically pushed up against the wall on your side and he took up most of the space, along with the Chihuahua at both your feet. If you turned toward him, you could feel his breath on you, getting worse as time passed because of the build up of odor causing bacteria in his mouth. No good morning kiss without a sufficient rinse, that’s for sure. You liked watching him sleep though, head tilted back, mouth slightly open. You wondered if you could get used to this, and you started to realize your growing affection for this person who almost otherwise, in most senses of the word, was a stranger. But something felt right about it. Yes, you could do this. You saw yourself waking up on Saturday mornings, cuddling next to him while he was still half asleep and would be for some time, your hand grazing over his chest, like a mother unconsciously stroking the back of her baby. When he was more awake, lazy pillow talk would follow, soft laughter, gentle gazes and shy smiles, followed by giggles, playful kisses and smacks on the ass. A perfect vision, and it made it that much harder to sleep.

In the morning, or more like close to noon, he made you breakfast which you couldn’t finish. Not because of the quantity, but because you were nauseated from lack of sleep. You managed to nibble enough off your plate so that he wouldn’t feel insulted or think that you weren’t grateful. Maybe he wouldn’t have thought those things, but you weren’t sure. You hadn’t known him that long anyway. You even kissed his cheek gently and said, “Thanks for the breakfast sweetie,” as you walked back to the room to rest some more, hoping that sleep would over take you now. It didn’t. You left about an hour later, coming to the couch where he was lounging, reading Pygmy by Chuck Palahanuik, sat down next to him and pressed your lips to his. That was the last time, but you didn’t know it then. The last time you smelled that room, that whole place, tasted it on his mouth, in his skin. And now, three weeks later, it's back, without warning and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Sit with it. Breathe. Smell. Taste. Be with it even though it hurts like bricks being dropped inside, one by one, and knowing that the hardest part will be trying to get up to make the weight bearing easier. The familiarity hurts more than anything, because now you have to make it unfamiliar. Your body is working on forgetting. It’s remembering so that it can forget.

It's going away now. Slowly. But no, come back! What was that again? I want to remember now. Before I didn’t because I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t prepared. I can sit with it now, it's ok. I can take it. It's gone. Back to reality and the knowledge that this is the only way you’ll ever experience that place again, if you want to. You know you don’t. You’re not the type to settle for mediocre attention, brief text messages and sporadic phone calls. Long written messages complaining about the lack of respect you’ve shown for his tight schedule, yet giving you hope that there’s chance for more contact. But only when he decides it’s time. You’ll have to wait. No thanks. It was nice while it lasted.

Oh wait, there it is! It’s come back again, on its own. Like a shy puppy that won’t go near anyone trying to grab it, but will come wandering up to the first unsuspecting person (or animal) it sees. Is that what he’s like? Maybe you should have given him more space, more time… But how much more time does someone need? Almost a week since you called, and still nothing. You’re done, you’ve told yourself this. Ah, but taste it… No, you don’t want to. It tastes like stale hope, a masochistic remembering. You don’t want this. It’ll go away eventually. It will. You can handle this. Just sit. Breathe. You know why this is happening, don’t you? Remember, so that you can forget. Breathe it in. There.