Deep Heat

We ran out of Voltaren cream, so Sam went and bought Deep Heat.

Sam is fine, no permanent damge. There is just some moaning and groaning and swearing to a god neither of us believe in, when he gets up, straightens up, or stands up, but it seems to be getting better each time. So, we're not claiming disability, or destined to live on a widow's pension, just yet.

But Deep Heat? I hate Deep Heat. I hate the smell of it on my hands when I have to rub it on his back. You just can't get that smell off your skin with one wash. I hate the smell of it lingering in the air making the whole place smell like a sports change room.

Funny, because it takes me back to my time as a kid when I used to go with my dad to cricket on Saturdays. I used to sit on the sidelines and score in the big green book.

I used to go back with him to the club rooms afterwards when all the players from the three Bentleigh teams used to meet back at home base to celebrate, or commiserate, and drink beer and shower and get changed before the women came to the club rooms, usually with food to feed their men.

There was me, young, gay, son sitting in the middle of it all those men in those club rooms smelling of Deep Heat and liniment and sweat,  drinking beer and showering and walking around in the nude, uninhibited, dressed only in their undies, laughing and pissing about. It used to cause a bit of deep heat in me, let me tell you, when I got home that night. The Love brothers. Jimmy Glass. Pete Robby. Jeremy Laird.

You'd think I'd like the smell of Deep Heat, because of that. Transported back there into that world of men once again on the memory of a scent. An olfactory turn on. In the budding-gay Tardis of smells.

You'd think? But I don't. I hate it. The stuff stinks.