Smells Like Summer (1990)

I encounter a large number of smells on my walk to work; the rank and wetly pungent reek of the dumpster outside of The War Room, the briney smell of the sound in the morning that stirs something in my blood – probably the same something that drew my family to the sea and to the Navy, the acrid day-old fire smell of the BBQ joint down in Pioneer Square. But this morning I walked behind someone wearing Fahrenheit, the fragrance.

I haven’t smelled it a lot, but every time I do I am pulled right back into being nineteen and in Europe for the first time. I hooked up with my father during that trip and we tooled around together for awhile.

Something to know about my dad: he loves cologne. A lot. Dad went and blew a wad in the duty free shop and Fahrenheit was the fragrance du jour.

Something else to know about my dad: he and I had a very difficult time living in the same house together. Frankly, we would have had a difficult time living in the same city together. This traveling together thing was going to be trial by fire – a subliminal cue that made him buy the Fahrenheit? I doubt it..

I definitely remember specific things about this first trip to Europe that I hope to never lose; driven to tears by the Van Gogh exhibit in Amsterdam, a heavy and dark storm coming in over the North Sea as I stood on a deserted tourist beach in my thin Cure T-shirt, the remnants of a medieval wall that had once surrounded Brussels. I remember a random old man giving me a history lesson of Lucerne (quite possibly the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen) in a Swiss accent so thick that I could only understand every fourth word – but there I was, smiling away like crazy anyway. I remember seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time and being shocked that it really existed, seeing the Mona Lisa and being shocked that that’s all there was to it.

But honestly some of my favorite moments of that trip were grand and historical in nature only to my dad and me. Getting just piss drunk with Dad in the small and charming streets of Alsmeer and being afraid I was going to puke up all that wonderful Grolsch. I remember trading off smokes and having playful arguments over whose turn it was to buy the next pack. I remember what felt like a thousand games of Gin, waiting for trains all over the continent. I remember the gleam in his eye as my dad showed me cities and cathedrals that he had seen and loved in another time. Realizing that it was possible, for a moment, to strip away the father/son crap and spend time together as a couple of guys.

The smell of Fahrenheit is not one of my favorites, it’s not a cologne that I especially like, but the memories are fucking superb.