recently while filling up the car at this archaic gas station i ran inside to pay in that they had not yet discovered credit card readers at the pump. it would seem the smoke-free environment had also eluded this establishment in that a white cloud billowed out the front door like i was on the set of ron howard's backdraft. after returning to the car, marty asked me if i had partaken in a carton of cigarettes or just hung out in the mouth of someone who had.

it was at this precise moment that a synapse in my brain registered a connection between carrying that memento out of the gas station and the special-heinous bathroom situation at my office building i spoke of earlier in the week (post super bowl vapors). the question is, am i transporting, on my person, the flatulatory swill of half the guys on my floor? i mean are these colonesque particles forever fused into my apparel and epidermis, because i can assure you they are forever etched into my mind.

and, before you belittle my neurosis please understand that these aren't your typical pencil-necks. these are men who move towards the bathroom with a confident conviction, proudly cradling a folded newspaper under their arm and loudly cracking it straight while in the stall.

but the funk. for the sake of debate, let's agree i am wearing it and it goes where i go and i'm unaware because my sensitive nasal receptors have been obliterated by the nefarious atoms which are almost visible to the naked eye given their extra volatile payload. do you think someone is going to alert me to this obvious problem? how do you tell someone that it doesn't necessarily smell like they stepped in something but that instead something pretty damn wicked stepped on them, twice, and squished and slid their feces-painted foot all over their person and that a conventional shower will not even begin to eradicate the foulness that has been imprinted on their soul and that even if you were to get into outbreak-like measures you'd be getting closer to a fix but still not in the ballpark and that you would most likely require some government issue exfoliater hidden in the vaults beneath the pentagon to begin correcting the irreparable damage certainly caused by whatever tattooed its aroma on you because at this very moment you not only have the stench of the ten people you came in direct contact with but you also are the proud possessor of rectal mites from the ten people each of those ten people had prior contact with and did i mention that you currently have about nine minutes to live.

i would not be comfortable telling a stranger this. bookguy sure, a stranger, no.