the human stain

A certain smell startled me when I did laundry today. No, I usually don't jerk reflexively at the scent of Tide, but it was the too familiar smell of anatomy lab in my freshly washed clothes that made me gag. Barbara's smell was new death, I called it, because it was more pungent and intense than in other bodies, those that have spent longer in formalin. New death. And I just caught a whiff of it. Strange. I found the offensive garment after some mild rummaging. An undershirt, pristinely white on top, with big, sprawling ovals of grease seemingly intact, stared back at me in defiance. Stubborn stains. I had washed that shirt with my other offending undergarments from the lab in a separate machine, and thought to dry all my clothing together to save a dollar. My plan was foiled. I threw the garment again into the washing machine as quickly as I could. The shirt probably could have used a pre-treat the first time around, but I was unaware of its state until now. I doused and soaked the thing in a concoction of 3 detergents, hoping to undo what was done.

I thought about why I had reacted so violently to the smell of formalin and human fat, one I've grown accustomed to, made jokes about, and taken pride in as a medical student. It was ten times milder than in the lab, and I don't gag there. I suppose it was the unexpectedness of it, a reaction to something so out of place and wholly vulgar to my sphere of domesticity, of weekend laundries and household chores. To find the garment still soiled, after having gone through a process that rid clothes of their ordinary stains, rendered these stains somehow otherworldly in their existence. The reality of how the marks got there escaped me. I just wasn't prepared for an encounter with a remnant of the dead, here, in my domain of the living. A momentary panic ensued as I frantically sniffed my laundry, hoping the offending smell didn't infect the load. An infection. As if the un-cleanliness were a viral contagion.

I inhaled deeply. Nothing but the springy scent of Tide reassured my nerves.

pic by De-Bivort; 2005