Tic Tac

Once in a while when I wake up, I like to pretend I'm 80 years old and smack my gums together with a smug look on my face. I proceed to imagine as if I were still in my dream with Elisha Cuthbert as she is on top on me (I'm lazy enough to let the dream girl do all the work), and then as I'm give pecks to my pillow, I begin to smell my breath. Ewww I ask myself, "Would I kiss myself if I smell like that?" Afraid to say no but too lazy to brush my teeth, I stare at the ceiling pondering that question till I realize I'm late for class.

I brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out with Scope while listening to Free Bird. Pick up the books and I'm off. An hour after class, I begin talking to my teacher and I begin to smell that same morning breath that attacked me earlier. And it's one of those smells where it gets so deep into your nose that it seeps into your throat and you begin to taste it. And I think, Dr. Davis, get a tic tac. But as I leave the room, the smell followed me, and I realized, Dr. Davis was fine. It was me. I still had it.

But what about the toothpaste and the Scope. There was no time for questioning, but only time for one to get from point A (campus) to point B (home) with minimal human contact. These are the times where four years on the 7 train really pay off, as I can pull off the "I'm pissed off, but not mean, tired, but awake, don't bother me and I won't bother you" look. But as I approach the shuttle stop, there she was. A cute girl...that I knew. Crap. In those moments, you give the closed mouth smile with lifted eyebrows which signals the "oh shit, my mouth tastes and smells like...shit" face. Panic leads to acceptance which leads to a glimmer of hope that maybe she won't notice.

And for the first moments, it seems as if the new hope is still alive. But like the Rocky series, all good things must come to an end. As I'm using my hands to explain some elaborate, funny story, and I hear her laughs, I begin to see the move. You know the move. The move where someone rests their chin in their palm, which is perfectly normal until the fingers move upward, curving over the lips, under the nostrils. Unless she was naked, the philosopher's pose was fooling nobody. I was beginning to wonder why she seemed so attentive, but I knew and she knew that if she did open her mouth, she would have soaked into her lungs the odor that is my breath. And as we parted our ways, I said, "See you later" and she responded with a wave over her shoulder, forcing me to go back to my apartment, and chug Scope till my mouth burned and seared of flowers and blueberries.