Insane

And then there was smell, the neglected sense that only tormented me in my years of learning to hold my breath and keep out the noxious fumes of my world. That was how I learned to breathe through my mouth, and gave myself a permanent disability in the form of terrible airway posture. Even back then, in a house with too many humans and too little civilization, I wished to depart from the base reality that I knew as normal, and step into the dreams that comforted and taught me on those afternoons spent staring at the glare of light on the glass shield of the fireplace.

A little spice sent me off into outer space, recovering from past the horizon everything I put aside as a child. There was the bitter earthen call of the ancients, then the salute of ambient skin and dust. Sniffing my soiled laundry after the high—slick sweat and sweet semen, dark dirt and dank detergent—was the prelude to an episode in Halifax when deviled eggs with a glass of rosé changed my life. How much more, beyond the glory of a chilled wine at midday, was hidden from me in this life?