Memorial Olfactorial
THE HOT LESBIAN COLUMN | ISSUE TWELVE | NOSTALGIA
Written by Paige Turner (she/her) | @paig_does_it | Contributing Lesbian
Yesterday I remembered the smell of your arms around me. You had just gotten out of the pool; the fragrance came on strong, an avant-garde perfume that never whetted your insatiable appetite.
Chlorine, salty sterile chlorine, bleachy acrid chlorine. Water running down your sunburnt skin in rivulets. A mass of wet hair splayed out like seaweed on your deep blue swimsuit. Off-white teeth formed a smile, shining in the dregs of the afternoon sunlight. I was happy to see you too.
“Did you have a good day today?”
“Every day’s a good day when I’m in the water.”
In the foyer outside the pool, I waited for you to change. The sun trickled through rectangular windows, high above our heads, and the world swelled ripe with possibility. Your championship was next week — the calendar on the receptionist’s desk reminded me of it.
Our daily walk delivered us from late afternoon to the end of civil twilight. Starting from the gate of the aquatic centre, we wove through the city streets, your apartment complex the final destination. Some days we’d take detours, other days we wouldn’t; the walks always ended at your apartment, where we’d part ways for the night, dreaming sweetly about the next time we’d see each other.
Just like every other day, we stopped at the convenience store on the way home and bought a popsicle each. They were creamy sky-blue, soda-flavoured, and slightly savoury, wrapped in clear plastic packaging without a brand. The owner made them out of a premade mix in the early morning and sold them to schoolkids in the afternoon. We’d clink them together before we unwrapped them – a mock toast celebrating the day’s victories – and devour them quickly before they melted in the tropical heat. Once we’d finished scarfing down the ice, we’d share the fortunes inscribed on the wooden sticks and laugh at how ridiculous they were.
The world was a boundless ocean as we walked and talked; we would be the ones to conquer it. I knew we would. It was our last year at high school, the last year at that stuffy girls’ college, and afterwards we’d be going into the adult world together, like we always had … everything together. Everything, together. I imagined someday we wouldn’t have to part ways at the end of our walk.
Above us, all around us, trickling downwards from the wide sky, the sunlight faded; the world dipped into swimsuit blue-green, swaying in the hazy heat. We plunged into a balmy, shallow darkness illuminated by the streetlights and the glow of the secondhand shops. The air drifted soft and smoky with the exhaust of countless cars on the nearby highway. Somewhere nearby, the smell of alcohol meandered from a bar’s windows; in the faraway alleyways, upbeat electronica echoed from the boomboxes of the neighbourhood dandies.
Tentatively, I reached my hand towards yours. I wasn’t sure if you’d notice. Some part of me hoped you wouldn’t.
You didn’t notice. Good. I gripped you tighter, stroking the back of your hand with my thumb as we strolled. My throat dried up; I was used to the heat, but not used to this feeling, this suffocation loitering in the back of my head waiting to lunge through my teeth.
Nothing was wrong, yet …
My stomach turned itself into knots, churning queasily like an ice cream machine. I smelled copper at the tip of my nose. Everything should have been right. I wasn’t sure what to say or do, or why I felt so uneasy around you: you who comforted me, you who encouraged me, you who I loved. So why, why, when it was all right, why did I feel so wrong?
It was at the bus stop in front of your apartment complex when I finally pinned down that feeling. There was something neither of us wanted to talk about.
I had to be the one to do it. I couldn’t bear forcing you to spit it out.
“I ... feel like ... you …” I struggled my way through the sentence whisper-quiet. “I feel like sometimes you don’t care about me as much as you care about your career,” I muttered.
I hoped you wouldn’t hear. You heard, of course, and flung your hands into the air, out of my grasp. “I do care, I do! I’m just busy, okay? I have other things I want to do too. I’m sorry we can’t hang out all the time, but that’s just how life is! I can’t care a hundred percent about everything at once! I have to prioritise, and you know I have a really busy season coming up, so …”
“I understand. I’ll take a back seat so you can get your medals,” I said, the words pouring from my mouth, too little time and surface tension to stop them.
“That’s …” Your face, so serene before, flushed orange-red under the yellow streetlamp. “… not what I meant. Why do you never get what I’m trying to say? It’s like every time I try to tell you something, you twist it into … some self-pitying crap.”
“No, I …” I didn’t mean it either, please—
“Whatever!” You slapped away my outstretched hand. “Take your back seat then! I promise the next time you’ll see me will be at the Olympics, on the podium with a gold medal!”
That was the last I heard from you in the bluest hour of my life, those words shouted as you fled into the night, your face turned firmly away from mine. I didn’t look for you at the pool the next day, or the day after, or the many lonely months that came and went. I didn’t even see you at school. I didn’t see many people at school most days, though. I was too busy keeping my head down and surviving the final exams.
Could I have said something more to you? Something that would have stopped you? I don’t know. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Maybe the right words to say were silent. Maybe I’ll never know, I guess.
It’s been thirteen years, but I still tell my therapist about you. I know, it’s pathetic, isn’t it? A grown woman with a steady job and a good place to live, unable to move on with her life after a whole decade? It’s not healthy in the slightest. My therapist tells me it’s normal for people to carry the burdens of the past, but eventually I’ll have to put them down, whether gently or dropped on my feet.
She’s right. I pay her to be right. I’ve been trying to get my mind off thoughts of you for the longest time. I tried to date other women, to focus on my career, to pick up hobbies … I think, for a time, journaling helped, but for now I’m still carrying that weight shaped like you.
I have to find closure somehow; I do. I can’t go back to that pool, or that street, or even the ocean. I’ve moved far, far away, retreating deep into the inner city where no water laps at my feet and no waves call your name – but I don’t think I can ever escape your pull.
Today I remembered to call you. I saw your page on the same social website we used to browse together. My eyes glazed over looking at your many posts from last year, your many new friends, your many accomplishments … until, finally, I came across your number in small print under the address of your place of employment.
I dialled your number with shaky hands and prayed my beat-up cellphone could reach you. I couldn’t tell if I wanted you to pick up. Some part of me hoped you’d hang up, dismiss me, curse me out; anything to validate my game of keep-away that had lasted for much too long. Some part of me hoped I’d at least get to squeak out an apology before the line went dead.
The dial tone ended. I braced myself for the response.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
It wasn’t your voice at all. It might have been your mother’s, your aunt’s, your older sister’s. I couldn’t tell.
“Hello. I’m a friend of …” and here I allowed myself to say your name, let the heavenly soundwaves wash over my mortal tongue with a sprinkle of salt.
“It’s a little too late to be looking for her.”
“Um, if she’s busy at the moment, I’ll call again later.”
A condescending tone crept into the other person’s voice. “Oh, she’s not busy at all.”
“Then please put her on the line.”
“If I could, I would.”
“So why can’t you just let me talk to her?”
“She’s …” Your relative went quiet. For a moment, I thought the call had disconnected. “She’s gone.”
I wished the call had disconnected. “What? How? Why did—?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know! It wasn’t my business anyway! If you were her friend, then why didn’t she tell you anything?!”
The words stung like iodine poured into an unhealed wound. “You’re right. I haven’t been her friend in years. I just wanted to see how she was—”
“Should have picked a better time to try!” your relative hissed. “Just last week and you could’ve saved her!”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t ever call this number again, bitch!”
And so I hung up obediently.
Yesterday I remembered you. The smell of your arms around me, the rivulets of water down your sunburnt skin, your off-white teeth standing guard in the formation of a smile.
Today I remembered crying.
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