O REG O N S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE
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OCTOBER 7. 2011
35
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The Scent Of Autumn
remember to breathe
“Hey, babe?” Sunday morning in Ladd’s Ad
dition, and the first rain of the autumn taps
against the windowpanes, cleaning the summers
dust from my boyfriend’s apartment building.
“Good morning, handsome,” he calls from
the kitchen over the drip drip of the coffee-
maker and the hiss of bacon on the stove.
Through the doorway I can see him, shirtless
and barefoot in his jeans, tending to our
breakfast. I sit up with the white comforter
over my legs, rub sleep out of my eyes.
“Just checking where you were,” I say, noticing
the gray sky through the trees outside. I lay my
head back down onto the pillows, close my eyes
again and breathe in deeply, stretching lazily.
For the ninth year in a row, the scent o f Pa
cific Northwest autumn fills my lungs. Every
year the scent is the same— the ozone scent of
the rain, the leaves turning musky in decom
position, the dust of the dog days running off
the trees into the river. Every year it is the
same, and every time my lungs fill with the
scent it shocks me.
I hear my boyfriend walking across his bed
room floor, smell beans and bacon over the
autumn. “Your coffee’s on the dresser, baby.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. I take a sip, taste
that he’s put two sugar cubes and a splash of
milk into it, exactly the way I always take it. I
sigh, gratefully.
vintage mustard-yellow corduroy coat that was
constantly soaked through with rain. I ran all
turning musky in decomposition, the
over my college campus in the soaked jacket that
autumn, chain smoking cigarettes and playing
dust of the dog days running off the
pretentious poetry games with art majors, eating
trees into the river.
hum bao and staying up all night trying to heal
Along with the scent, every year autumn in my youthfiil melancholy with frantic Christian
Portland comes with a distinctive emotion. I Science prayer. Years later, in the middle of a
look outside, see how the gray clouds make Northern California storage unit, I unpacked a
the sky seem impossibly close to the treetops. box and, crushed and battered beneath the dross
Air blows in through the open window, runs of my late teens, was the corduroy jacket. I pulled
over my bare shoulders and chills me; I shiver it out, my eyes wide, and was smnned by the
and I pull the blanket up to my chin. The feel scent of musk, leaves, ozone. It smelled like au
tumn, that first autumn when I was wild and sad
ing settles over me.
I think back to this time last year, walking and free, and the feeling settled over me again.
along SE 11th Avenue in my cut-off jeans, tipsy
W hat is the emotion that comes with the
from mid-afternoon beers. A familiar smell cut season? For eight years, when the dog days of
through the exhaust and dust of the street—the summer cooled, I thought it was dread. A
scent o f autumn, I thought, looking up and see quiet sadness would creep into my bones like a
ing smoke rising from a chimney across the threat, and I would shiver with fear that it
street. Gradually, like the low clouds blowing in would expand to fill the space o f my life the
from the west, the feeling came over me with way the clouds fill the sky in late September. I
the arrogance of Portland rain, quietly boastful would rush frantically to numh it with parties,
that it was coming home to roost.
with projects, the ten thousand things avail
I wasn’t prepared for the autumn when I end able to those who are young and smart and Nick Mattos still has his tattered corduroy coat in a box
ed up in Olympia nine years ago. The ingénue I terrified o f feeling sad. Autumn came, again somewhere. Reach him at nickmattos@justout.com.
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B Y N IC K M A T T O S
Every year the scent is the same— the was, I didn’t even own a raincoat— I lived in a
ozone scent of the rain, the leaves
new
H O LE
SIM PLY A LL ADULT M jj
Cruisy Ricade
SJffSSS—
w w w .m rp e e p s .c o m
and again, bringing with it the scent o f rain
and trees, melancholy— and I fought it, again
and again, losing every time.
In this big warm bed in this small Southeast
Portland apartment, with the percussion of
the rain against the windows and the smell of
Sunday morning breakfast, the familiar feeling
comes over me— and I know that, all of these
years, I have given it the wrong name. It isn’t
dread that comes with the autumn, it is sur
render, the world teaching me again and again
that the light and the dark give forth to each
other, that the rain will run over the trees and
down to rejoin the river, then back to the
clouds to fall again. The autumn comes, just as
it always will, and I stop fighting it, breathe it '
into my lungs and my bones.
My boyfriend walks into the room, plates o f
bacon and eggs in his hand. He sits on the bed.
Today, the autumn has come, dark and sensu
ous, collecting slowly like the rain on the win
dowsill. We sit on the bed quietly, letting the
cold air blow in from outside, across the skin o f
our shoulders, eating slowly. Outside, the clouds .
roll unbroken in the sky, dropping their rain
across the city. We eat our breakfast and watch
them roll, warm in our bed, smiling.
1
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