RMS

Adolescence is a weird time. Puberty, sexuality, dating; all of this hits you at once like a cruel joke. I went through the normal crap, some of it never going away actually. For instance, I am bound to have acne until the day I die, and my beard is still as patchy as a 12 year old. My baby fat never went away, but at least I’m balding.

There is one thing that happened to me that I believe is unique, however. It was fleeting, lasting only 2 weeks..but it was so fowl and so nasty, that over 15 years later, my family still brings it up and mocks me as if it was yesterday…as if it was something I could control. I am speaking of something know to my family as RMS. It stands for Rotten Milk Shit. Nothing else quite sums up the combination of utter bile that seemed to weep from my pores. For two weeks of my life I had the over powering aroma of Rotten Milk Shit.

I don’t know where it came from. I was a psycho about hygiene. I showered twice a day, wore my green, fresh scent, Speedstick, I ate mints, I doused myself in Drakkar, I chewed 18 pieces of spearmint gum a day…yet I reeked like three week old sewage, trapped in jar, sitting in the hot sun for days. More interesting, I couldn’t smell it. It permeated my soul but was undetectable to my own senses, yet it was there. Everyone talked about it.

We tried to find the origin, was it from my mouth….from my ass? No one could tell, but it was nasty. Even my girlfriend at the time mentioned my interesting aroma. She tried to be nice, but her upturned shnoz made it abundantly clear. My brother coined the RMS phrase, and ever since, it has been attributed to me and a time in history that nobody wants to remember. Now I am self conscious, to say the least. Having this stinky knowledge, and being 16 years old, I damn near quit high school and moved to the hills.

I made it through, and like all things, time healed our nostrils and the stench subsided. I grew and got married, had kids and all is well, but the perplexing question of my unbearable stench for that two weeks of hell still plagues my mind. Has this happened to you? What was it? Did I have an anal slug? Did my armpits get infested with black mold? Did a rancid sea snake crawl down my throat and crap in my lungs, then burst in my belly releasing thousands of rotten undead baby snakes? Why me, why then? For those of you that have been ostracized for something out of your control, I feel your pain. I’ve been there. I was one stinky teenage bastard.