"So what'll it be, miss?" It'll be a long night, I thought, if a better class of guy doesn't start walking in here soon. Zoe had recommended this bar to me, telling me it was a great place to meet guys, but I remembered right around the time the bartender asked for my order that I'd bummed a whole pack of cigarettes off of Zoe over the course of last weekend's bar-hopping and forgotten to replace it. This had to be her way of getting me back. The guys wandering around looked like a collection of losers, scrubs, wannabes and sexual predators, and the guy-to-girl ratio looked to be something along the lines of ten to one--which would be a plus if they were better guys, but no such luck. They were all hounds on the make and I was (not to flatter myself) the only decent-looking woman in the place.
"Scotch and soda," I said. "Make it a double." I handed him a ten, said "Keep the change," then checked my watch. Eight-thirty. I figured I'd give the joint a half-hour, just in case Zoe hadn't been scamming me, but I definitely planned to get out of here while I was still sober enough to drive to a better class of bar. I was already trying to decide where to go when he walked through the door.
The first thing that struck me about him was his Adam's apple. Maybe it was just that he was a skinny, gangly kid of a guy, barely twenty-one if he wasn't walking in here on a fake ID, but that thing stuck out like Adam had eaten the whole apple, not just a piece. It bobbed up and down like a nervous sparrow as he looked around the room. With an unerring instinct and a sinking feeling, I knew he was going to head my way.
The second thing that struck me about him was his glasses. I know that they say those big, chunky horn-rimmed things are coming back into style, but most of the guys wearing them don't have skinny faces and big jug ears. They looked comically big on him, magnifying his eyes to a ludicrous extent as they fixed on me, just like I figured they would. Sure enough, he started walking over to me. I could tell he was one of those guys who had no concept of what his dating league was--instead of going for one of the girls in the room who was maybe a little flat-chested, or buck-toothed, or something that would make her willing to settle, he went for a gorgeous blonde with a great rack and legs to die for. (If I do say so myself. I'm not vain, but I don't see any point in false modesty either.)
The third thing that struck me, as he walked over to the bar, was the smell.
It was strong, definitely. It was also very definitely very unpleasant. Sort of like what you might get if you crossbred a skunk with a ferret, then ran it on a treadmill for a few hours and ran it through a juicer out onto an unwashed gym sock. There was also kind of a hint of burning rubber to it, I think, but I sure as hell wasn't inhaling deeply enough to find out. In fact, when the wave of stench hit me like an advancing wall as he approached, I was breathing as shallowly as I possibly could. My eyes were watering, and only the knowledge that I was waiting for a drink I'd already paid for kept me from sprinting out the door right that second and sucking in deep lungfuls of fresh air.
He must have seen the expression on my face, because he said, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it." I didn't see how that could possibly be true, but explaining that to him would involve speaking, and that would involve breathing, and I was trying to minimize that.
"My name's Stan," he said. "Can I buy you a drink?"
"No thanks," I said, looking down at the bar. "Got one on the way." I tried to keep to short sentences. No point in sucking in any more of that...ugh, it was like cologne that had been sitting for twenty years and gone rancid. I looked desperately down at the bartender, but he was taking his sweet time with an order down at the other end of the bar. I didn't blame him. I wouldn't have wanted to voluntarily enter the stench zone either if I was him.
"So what's your name?" Stan asked.
"Anji," I said shortly, hoping to signal that I wasn't interested in prolonging the conversation. I just wanted to get my drink, make my excuses, and get to someplace that wasn't right next to Stan, swimming in his funk. God, how much of that stuff did he put on? Did he just buy a gallon of cologne from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart and then pour it all on at once?
"That's a pretty name," he said. That seemed to exhaust his conversational skills for a long moment. He just stared at my boobs in a way that suggested he didn't realize I noticed.
Waiting for that drink felt like the longest two minutes of my life. I just sat there, trying to breathe through my mouth and feeling that stink seep into my pores. It wasn't making me nauseous, I had to admit that. It wasn't a rotten smell, like garbage or roadkill. It just made me dizzy, like I couldn't get enough actual oxygen through the miasma of...fuck, I don't know. Polecat urine, maybe. Every accidental sniff brought whole new sweeping vistas of nasal horror.
Finally, the bartender set down my scotch and soda. "I'll take a whiskey and water," Stan said, handing over a ten. The bartender nodded, then scampered back to the opposite end of the bar. Pretty much everyone within sniffing range was giving me a sympathetic look as I sat there, miserable, but I knew I wasn't going to be sticking around much longer. All I needed to do was to suck down my drink as fast as humanly possible, excuse myself to go to the restroom afterwards, then slip out and I'd have extricated myself from this with a minimum of social awkwardness. I took a long gulp of my scotch, and grimaced. I could actually taste that smell in my drink.
"So what do you think of my cologne?" Stan asked.
That was about the limit of my politeness. I was willing to not bring it up, but if he was asking... "It's terrible," I said, trying not to sound mean. "Sorry, but you should really just go home and wash it off. Whoever sold you that stuff suckered you big time." I took another gulp of my scotch.
"Oh, nobody sold it to me," Stan said proudly. "I made it myself."
"You made it?" I said in astonishment. "On purpose?"
"Yeah," he said, grinning like an idiot. "I saw one of those ads for the colognes that have pheromones in them--you know, the ones that are supposed to attract women?"
I couldn't help myself, I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on, Stan," I said, taking another drink. "Everyone knows those don't really work."
"Well, no. Of course they don't. They're junk." Stan looked over at the bartender, dawdling over Stan's order. "They just use mass-produced synthetic pheromones. What's needed is specifically tailored human pheromones, a scent that's actually unique to the person using it. I distilled this out of my own sweat, and then broke down its chemical balance to reproduce it."
"So why did you splash so much on?" I asked. I knew this whole line of conversation was idiotic, but I couldn't help but exhibit some morbid curiosity about the whole deal. "I mean, if it's that hard to make, shouldn't you, I dunno, use smaller doses?"
Ones that aren't likely to choke the women you're trying to seduce?
"Because it takes a lot to have an effect. If I just dabbed a little on, you wouldn't even notice it. You'd maybe think I'd just gotten back from the gym, and maybe you'd have a little extra smile for me, but even that's only if it didn't get blown out with the air conditioner. No, if I want a girl like you to pay attention to a guy like me," he said with a sheepish grin, "I need to use a ton of this stuff."
"Sorry, Stan," I said, turning to face him and putting my hand on his shoulder, "but it's still not working. All it does is make you smell terrible." I tried to make it sound as nice as possible. Poor kid obviously had self-esteem issues to have come up with an idea this bad, and I didn't want to make them worse by ripping him a new one in a public place. I figured I'd just give him a nice dose of 'soulful honesty' and a little physical contact to soften the blow.
Stan's face fell for a moment. Then he smiled. "So if it's not working, why are you still here? I mean, if it smells that bad, why haven't you moved down to the other end of the bar like all those guys?" He gestured down to a collection of scrubs who had congregated as far away from the smell as possible. "They don't react to the pheromones, of course. Not wired for it. But you, you're sitting right next to me. Why is that?"
