Caught Smelling Books

I may have shared this before, but here it is anyway.

In high school there was this girl I really, really liked, but she had a boyfriend, so, we talked—a lot. I would lend her some science fiction and fantasy books to read and one day when she returned a paperback (A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony—Oh, I remember!), she seemed embarrassed and apologized because, as she explained, her perfume had leaked in her purse and since my book was in there, well, it got soaked with it.

Every day after that I would come home from school and take the book off my shelf, put it to my face and inhale the flowery spice of her perfume. In time, the scent began to fade as it merged with the bleach and ink odor of the pages. Eventually, all that was left was the smell of old paperback.

Years later, she admitted that the bottle of fragrance had never actually spilled. She had purposefully drenched it with her perfume just before returning it to me because she knew it would drive me crazy.

Well, as usual, she was right.

The book:

Revisiting this book, I am reminded just how normalized sexism was in the science fiction and fantasy stories of the 70’s and 80’s (which is all I read as a teen). For example, depending on the time of the month, Chameleon, the titular character, (sorry, couldn’t resist), is either the most beautiful or the most intelligent woman in all the land. However, at her most intelligent she is hideously ugly, and at her most beautiful she is so stupid she can hardly take care of herself. Her company is most manageable, of course, when she is of average appearance and intelligence. I mean, wow! I’m having trouble deciding if this is either some Jon Stewart level satire, or simply era appropriate misogyny. Either way, this is really clever, and at least one example of why I enjoyed this author so much.

The perfume:

Scoundrel by Revlon. Described as sophisticated, sexy, and enchanting, evoking a sense of daring. Its slogan: “Seize the Moment.”

The girl:

No, poking my nose into the pages of a paperback and pressing my face into the side of this woman’s neck—just below and behind her ear—are definitely not the same thing. But for a while, a week at least in 1983, they were as imaginably as close as they could be.

A sample: (No, not of the perfume, my story.)

She’s quiet for so long you suspect she’s fallen asleep. The night air is cool against your face and you breathe it in, slowly filling your lungs with the sweet, earthy smell of the damp grass, the woody-tang of the citrus trees, and the flowery warmth of this girl pressed softly against you.

You look across the dimly lit lawn at the people gathered around the keg, at the heads and shoulders crowded together in the kitchen, and at the bodies shifting about inside the house, and wonder how long it will take Tony Rodriguez to find you out here and beat the living shit out of you.

Van Der Boot 1983: Episode 40: “Some Kind of Suicide Mission”