Unprotected Synapses

She wears a fragrance that’s vaguely reminiscent of stuff you spray on yourself at the campgrounds to keep the bugs off you. Maybe that’s the idea, I wonder. But she’s hoping to keep bigger things than bugs off of her. Well, in this case, mission accomplished.

We’re waiting for the light to change and she’s talking to her friend about some play she saw. Doesn’t sound like one of the biggies downtown; it sounds like a real one. You know, where amateur nobodies who are jealous of the somebodies study at home for weeks and then perform in front of three dozen people who are even less talented and sit there in jealousy of them? That kind of thing. So you can see how far down the jealousy food chain Ms Eau-de-Deep-Woods-Off actually is.

The light changes and I’m worried they’re going to keep pace with me, but they’re coming back from lunch and they’re taking it easy, so I easy outdistance their leisurely gait and I’m out of earshot (not to mention noseshot) in pretty short order. Man, the things you endure when you don’t have your MP3 player on you. How did we ever survive being out in public before we invented Walkmans and cellphones and laptops and portable Segas and all the other palm-sized magic we use to keep the social universe at bay? Here I am without my intellectual force field of noise, condemned to have to deal with other people’s experiences and opinions and knowledge. I don’t know which is the greater imposition: her scent or her discourse.

Back at my desk, I run the name of the play through a search engine. Surely, in some odd, subtle way, I’ve been violated.