Velvet in Dupont 02 Jun 2006 11:19 am
Baby Blue Eyes, Your Head on My Shoulder
Last week I became paralyzed while uttering the sentence, “I’ll have the salad with dressing on the side please.” I stopped mid sentence. Someone walked by with your cologne, and it took my breath away. I was rendered utterly useless. Stuck in an inability to speak. There are the flashbacks. Loud and clear. Vivid.
Three times. Three times yesterday. The song hasn’t even been on the Billboard charts in the last year. I never hear the song except for yesterday. Three times yesterday. It brings back a memory so intense that it has single handedly reshaped my life since I last saw you. Going about my daily routine, I get a flash. A flash of us dancing. A flash of us laughing. A flash of us kissing. A flash of you pulling a piece of my hair out of my eyes. A flash…of your hands on my hips.
“I’ll just sit right here and let you take me back. I’m on that gravel road, look at me. On my way to pick you up. Standing on the front porch looking just like that.”
on 02 Jun 2006 at 11:27 am # Moni
Urgh. I know exactly how that feels. Two examples: a) I still remember my most beloved ex when I smell his cologne on others and b) I still get an angry shock, 13 years later, when I smell the cologne of the first asshole who ever cheated on me. Why is the olfatory sense so attached to memories? Sigh.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 11:32 am # I-66
So you’re saying I should… change my cologne?
on 02 Jun 2006 at 11:52 am # Toya
Ooooh … I know that feeling. I still can’t listen to “How Deep Is Your Love?” or “Break Up to Make Up” without having vivid, *vivid* flashbacks to my high school sweetheart.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 12:35 pm # KassyK
Ahhhh do I know that feeling. For me its the Jean Paul Gaultier my ex wears…or Hearing 112’s “Only You”.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 1:10 pm # Sweet
love your new tagline
on 02 Jun 2006 at 1:10 pm # Reddudette
For me it was when I was married and I came home and my husband smelled like the degenerates that drank too much the night before that came into my work. That’s when I realized he was an alcoholic.
Or when I hugged my Mother and it shocked me that she smelled like my Grandmother who had passed several years before. My Mother was wearing Grandma’s perfume. It brought me to tears.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 1:59 pm # reluctant dater
Funny you should write that about “the song.” I have two such songs that send me into a frenzy. I have thousands of songs on my ipod yet these two always seem to come up on shuffle. And they are both always on the radio even though they, too, have not been on the Billboard charts in ages. Part of me, though, likes to remember the “good” times–affirmation that they can exist and they will, sometime, again. Or not.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 3:08 pm # Chico's Bail Bonds
Well… I was secretly hoping that you were paralyzed by the knowledge that you, in fact, wanted the dressing ON the salad, but you sort of went the other way with that one…
It’s amazing how you describe a scene and tell a story in such a way that it gives me that pit-in-my-stomach, apex of the roller coaster feeling, in a physical form of empathy.
Isn’t it tragically cool that love and relationships are so intensely private and selfish and yet we all know EXACTLY how one another feels at certain moments?
on 02 Jun 2006 at 3:38 pm # Twoste
“Frankly my dear, I just don’t give a damn,” Clark Gable, “Gone With the Wind.”
on 02 Jun 2006 at 4:25 pm # Scarlet
Yeah, I have the song thing. I get way too attached to them as it is, so when someone special gets connected with one? Watch out.
Sadly, bourbon reminds me of one of my past dudes….yikes.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 4:56 pm # Siryn
Sensory memory is a very powerful thing.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 5:13 pm # bejeweled
It’s amazing how the slightest nothingness of an ex’s whatever could bring us back to the days of when we were w/ them. Who knew the thought of gooey-butter cake could bring me to tears?? It was my high school sweetie’s fav… oh how sad!
on 02 Jun 2006 at 5:45 pm # Barbara
Are we back in Arizona?
on 02 Jun 2006 at 9:57 pm # Washington Cube
I started cleaning out old computers yesterday (I’ve got three more to ditch…yes…THREE), and even seeing the screen come up with old buddy lists and icons was enough to throw me back into time and another place with another person. When I hit the picture files, which is why I was on these old machines anyway, to retrieve stuff I wanted to save, and found certain photographs, it did me in. And yes, I actually keep a bottle of his cologne tucked in between my perfume bottles. Trust me. People indulge in and get triggered by all sorts of things. I can remember one specific instance of him going over to the bureau and picking up the bottles and sniffing and going, “mmmm.” Funny/sad…huh?
on 03 Jun 2006 at 12:07 am # Drunken Chud
i’m pretty sure everyone knows you’re writing about me. and it’s ok, i’ve been paying people to wear my cologne. i called every radio station and made them play our song. well, i payed them. i didn’t make them. so, there ya go. simple explanations.
on 03 Jun 2006 at 1:12 am # Stef
Yeah, the sense of smell is a kicker. Eternity was my first love, and 14 years later that smell still brings me back to being 17 and feeling like the whole world rose and fell on my emotions. I never learned what that smell of the last heartbreak was - I think a mixture of soap and aftershave, but on the rare times when I smell that, it’s a killer. Of course, when he randomly emails me out of nowhere that’s even worse….
on 03 Jun 2006 at 11:04 am # kob
This is very good writing.
>Last week I became paralyzed while uttering the sentence, “I’ll have the salad with dressing on the side please.” I stopped mid sentence. Someone walked by with your cologne,
on 03 Jun 2006 at 1:47 pm # Big Sis
Did you get your salad?
on 03 Jun 2006 at 3:50 pm # Bilious Pudenda
I’m with Big Sis (nyuck, nyuck)
A million surplus Brad Pitts are willing to make you squeal.
And a man is only a man, but a good salad is a meal.
Apologies to Mr. Kipling
on 03 Jun 2006 at 10:18 pm # playfulindc
All of this would be conquered with allergy medication. Or a lot of zinc in your diet.
Those losenges and a little tablet of over the counter sneezy meds, and I don’t feel a thing.
on 05 Jun 2006 at 2:05 pm # Mel
I think Chico said it best:
“Isn’t it tragically cool that love and relationships are so intensely private and selfish and yet we all know EXACTLY how one another feels at certain moments?”
on 06 Jun 2006 at 7:48 am # Riona
Gold, Velvet. Gold.