Soap

Soap is something I enjoy. I often like to put a record on and hold a fresh bar of soap, unused. I keep a bar of soap just for such an occasion. Its like a cigarette or a night cap. I come home from work and I draw the curtains and put on a record. Sitting in an easy chair, with the crackle of the needle on vinyl lacing the sounds of some jazz, I hold the bar to my nose, clinching it tightly with both hands. I like to close my eyes, inhale the fragrance and then let the air flood back out my nose, my lips tightly pursed.

Any ordinary soap will do, just something you can buy for a dollar and a quarter at a grocery store. Its not like I idolize it like a drug. I don't run in the store and by a quart of milk and a bar of soap, run to my car, race home, leave the milk on the table (unrefrigerated) and rip into the packaging like its a fix. Its like a child's blanket when they keep it for familiarity in adolescents. Its not obsessive, just comforting.

Also my wife never wore perfume, she was just clean. She didn't necessarily use the same soap, she just smelled like soap so I guess when she died...

She used to come home, draw our red curtains closed and turn on a table lamp. The lighting and the curtains made our living room feel like an intimate theater where our love story was a gentle, subtle, and thoroughly enjoyable production. She liked to shower in the afternoon, so when I came home from work and before we started cooking dinner, she would greet me, smelling clean...like soap. We always cooked together. We couldn't have children, so we were never type cast in the productions of our home. You know, her as the apron wearing domesticess and I as the autonomous patriarch. It was a small production, done in the round, with two supporting actors, no lead.

Soap can be nice, just to hold, waxy in your palm, calming in your senses.