Super Powers

A little over a year ago, I developed super powers. Specifically, I had spidey smell.

It happened while I was riding the T in Boston, something I did all the time. The T doesn't generally have much of a specific smell. It's not like the New York subway, which reeks of hot old asphalt. Boston is just sort of there. Train. People. Wet coats. That's it.

But this time, it was different. Every human who came near to me was packed in a thoroughly detailed set of layered smells. My eyes crept to their corners to look at a man who, I was 95% certain, had had a chicken parm sandwich for lunch four hours ago. A woman on the other side of me had a drinking problem, and her preferred poison was gin. This person was wearing musky perfume with top notes of sandalwood and lime. That person hadn't brushed his teeth that morning. I was riding the Blue Line, and I'd started at the end with a nearly empty train at Wonderland, and has more and more people piled on I had to swallow back the rise of bile from too many smells. I pulled my scarf over my nose, which helped a little, but even my scarf was too detailed. It smelled like me, my hair in particular, but also with the faintest remnant of dry cleaning fluid.

When I arrived at the dinner party, I knew at the bottom of the stairwell what was being served.

"This is weird," I announced to my friends. "I don't know what's going on."

My friends were privy to the recent medically-necessary removal of my IUD. (I still think it's the best method, shift in position notwithstanding.) They were also mid-baby-creation attempt. They had all the books and everything. I wasn't "trying" at that point. I was winging it. When the IUD came out they asked me what method I would be switching to, and I'd swallowed hard and said "None." The nurse practitioner's eyebrows went up. "I'm married, I'm 36, I have a good job. You know. I'm just going to see what happens." She'd told me to take a vitamin every day and sent me on my way.

"That's him," my friend W said wisely.

"Come on," I said.

W and his wife exchanged a knowing look common among fertile people.

"Totally," said K, W's wife.

What they didn't know is, I'd recently checked myself out with a pee stick, and it had turned up with a "Room for Rent" sign.

"It's not," I insisted. "I checked."

"It's him," W nodded like a wise mage. "He's just hiding."

Well, it wasn't you, as you've probably noticed, because you still don't exist, but I will say that my spidey smell lasted for about a week, and then the world resumed its normal olfactory contours, and my super power hasn't come back since.  I was suspicious. I kept pulling out the neck of my t-shirt and looking down.

The temptation is there, to read the signs. To consult my body like a mystic reading tea leaves. Am I bloated? Is it normal? I get woozy at yoga, have to gulp for air, put my forehead down in child's pose, and stop early. Is it Something? Or have I just not slept enough?

Last night, I lay in a heap on the sofa watching reruns of Sex and the City via my in-law's stolen HBO passwords, shuddering at the fact that I'm now older than all those characters (except Samantha). Around 12:30, I got hungry. Not just hungry, but Hungry. I considered eating a block of cheddar cheese. In a fit of reason, instead I heated up a little vegan barbecue snack pocket thing - only 230 calories, and 10 grams of protein - and scarfed it down while it was still hot enough to singe my fingers.

Is it Something? Or is it nothing?