Category: the stankles

Phony, Even Amongst Themselves.

I often wonder what makes certain people behave one way in public and quite another when they believe no one is watching.  It’s a small mystery of human nature, but every now and then, a particular encounter forces me to look at it more closely.

The Stankles were just such a family.

Individually, each member was curt at best and openly rude at worst.  When I passed them alone in the lobby, they wouldn’t greet me, wouldn’t hold a door, wouldn’t even muster the basic civility expected of neighbors.  Adonis Stankle once sneered outright at the ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, as if the sign of repentance were a personal affront to him.  Which, maybe it was.  He left the Church because of some falling out with his own father and moved to a non-denominational Protestant sect.  That’s what he said.

But the moment another Stankle appeared beside them, the transformation was instantaneous.  Suddenly it was All Christian, All the Time: doors held open, cheerful greetings, syrupy small talk, and enough forced sunshine to blind a person.  As a group, they radiated a kind of performative wholesomeness.  Alone, each one reverted to something far less pleasant.

What made the contrast even stranger was that Adonis, the patriarch, fancied himself a weekend preacher.  Every Sunday he mounted his little stage of his community building of self-importance, reading from his community’s version of Scripture and occasionally dunking someone in the waters of baptism.  Meanwhile, his children vandalized parts of the building and stashed garbage in the common-area closets.  His wife, when encountered alone, was as prickly and uncommunicative as a person could be.

It was the oldest stereotype in the book: the preacher’s family who shines only when the lights are on.  The more I observed them, the more I wondered whether the righteousness they displayed in public was merely a costume; one they donned for applause and shed the moment the audience disappeared.

It sure seemed that way.

 

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Ciao, Baby.

The family of one of our more pungently aromatic residents has officially left the building.  The U‑Haul is sealed and locked, the cars are idling, and with them, their smells are preparing to embark on a cross‑country tour.  I imagine the exhaust fumes themselves are already begging for mercy.

Yes, one of the most infamous contributors to our high‑rise’s atmospheric instability has departed: Adonis and his clan, whom I privately (and accurately) referred to as The Stankles.  They are now barreling down the highway toward Pennsylvania, where they will no doubt introduce the Poconos to a whole new category of air quality alerts.  Adonis will be taking a new position onstage every Sunday and Wednesday, and Mrs. Stankle will continue her lifelong mission of single‑handedly keeping Bath & Body Works in business.  The kids will probably continue their behind-the-scenes vandalism and hijinx, because that’s what they do.  Their daughter is someone I would like to know where her life will go, since at the now-tender age of 12, she also walked the hallways every summer nearly naked in her bikini.  I suppose her father, Adonis, doesn’t preach modesty on stage every Sunday and Wednesday.  sigh

As you may recall, if scent could take physical form, this family would have traveled through life inside a permanent soft green fog, something between a cartoon stink cloud and a Department of War desert field experiment.  Each member of the household believed cologne was not something one applied, but something one soaked in and marinated.  Not spritz.  Not dab.  Full immersion, and ideally overnight.

I will not miss the unmistakable aroma of Adonis returning from the neighborhood gym, sweat cascading off him in rivulets that perfumed the hallways with a scent best described as “ancient locker unearthed from a peat bog.”  It was bad enough watching him attempt to walk normally.  Around the building and along the sidewalks, we neighbors would see his bare torso and biceps so inflated he could no longer lower his arms straight down.  He moved like a man permanently prepared to carry two large Thanksgiving tom turkeys.

Whenever that throat‑tightening, eye‑watering haze slapped me across the face, I knew exactly what it meant: the Stankles had either departed for work and school or had triumphantly returned.  They lived on the opposite end of the hallway from me, which made the reach of their fumes all the more impressive.  For the stench to drift all the way to my wing, it must have clung to them like a second skin and through all seven layers.  Frankly, I suspect the fumes had their own lease agreement.

And now they are off to their new life, ready to add a fresh bouquet to the Poconos Mountains.  I wish the region and their new neighborhood luck.  They’ll need it.

Ciao!

 

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The Mark of Mordechi.

There were always dirty spots on the hallway carpets and in the elevators when I lived at Sage Pointe.  At first glance, they looked like the usual suspects, perhaps greasy take‑out containers leaking through flimsy bags, or perhaps the aftermath of a dog with poor timing.  Whatever their origin, the stains remained year after year after year, since no one on the board of directors ever bothered to call a carpet‑cleaning company to shampoo the carpets.

One weekend, though, someone obviously made an effort.  A sharp smell of Resolve® or Shout® hung in the hallways, proof that some anonymous soul had tried to scrub away the blotches.  Whoever it was deserved a medal for attempting to keep the place somewhat presentable.

Then came the Saturday afternoon when I stood waiting for the elevator to reach my floor.  At last, the doors slid open, and there stood Maddee and her younger brother, Mordechi, dripping from the pool and armed with their usual assortment of floaties and bottles.  Just as the doors parted, I caught Maddee in mid‑swoop, giving her water bottle a final flourish and spraying the elevator carpet.  When I looked down, I saw she had left a large, wet “M” beside the other permanent stains.  She and her brother stepped out quickly, their faces tight with guilt and silence.

I greeted them anyway, asked how they were. “How you doing?” I asked.  Maddee’s cheeks flushed deep crimson, and she stammered and babbled through a jumble of half‑formed words as she tripped over her tongue.  She knew that I knew.

The next morning, more than twelve hours later, I rode the elevator again.  The wet “M” was still there.  If it had been water, it would have evaporated long before.  Whatever she’d squirted (soda? juice? suntan lotion?) had soaked in and stayed put.  It’s still there to this day.

Funny, isn’t it, how the Stankle kids, the offspring of Adonis the preacher man and his aromatic wife, aren’t always the paragons one might expect.  And the kids weren’t toddlers; at the time this happened she was about eleven, he was about nine.  Both were old enough to know better and old enough to choose differently.  After all, their father preached it every Sunday and Wednesday on stage.

In a condominium association like Sage Pointe, the carpets in every building told the truth long before the residents did.  Every stain, every spill, every careless squirt from a child’s bottle became part of the story we all had to live with.

Courtesy, like cleanliness, is a shared responsibility.  It’s one that begins with small choices made when no one is supposed to be watching.  And yet, as those lingering marks remind us, someone always is watching, even if it’s only God.

 

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Stench in the Shadows.

In the condominium association where I lived once upon a time, there was a strange occurrence that only a brave resident could resolve.  This is the true story.

The overstuffed garbage bags appeared twice weekly in the broom closet on the fifth floor of the condominium building.

What brought this to the attention of the residents was the overpowering stench of rotting foods in the bags.

On a Saturday morning, Miss Wanda, the bravest of the fifth-floor residents, had enough of the reek and marched to the broom closet.  Several residents followed her, for they wanted to be in on the revelation.  Wanda opened the door, and there it was: an overstuffed Hefty® bag emitting a stench that would knock a skunk off his beam.

Wanda took one of the bags and opened it up.  Everyone around her jumped back and held their noses.

“It smells like death,” Old Man Fontane gasped.  “Death on a plate of rotted sardines.”

“At least!” gagged Issac Brenner.  “It smells worse than my ex-wife’s armpits after a sweaty walk in the park.  I’d know that stench anywhere.  Barf!”

“Hoo-eee, Lordy!”  Mrs. Chisa Cooke walked away while holding her nose.  “Y’all enjoy.  I’m headed off to watch Julia reruns on my brand new television.”

Bravely, Miss Wanda dug into the garbage bag.  Slimy beet greens, a moldly banana, empty cartons, and paper brochures from the Poconos greeted her.  She dug around until she saw an envelope.  She reached for it with two fingers.

“Ah!  Well.”  She examined the address.  “Ah ha!  It’s from that brood across the hall from me.  I’ll talk to them.”  The neighbors nodded their heads and a few just whispered, “Ooo!” and “Yeah.”

Miss Wanda knocked on the Stankles’ door.  After talking with the grandmama, neighbors could hear the two women laughing before Miss Wanda returned to her condominium.

“So who did it?” Mrs. Chisa Cooke asked the next day in the laundry room.

“Oh, it was her youngest grandbaby, Tristane.  Do you know that ten-year-old is afraid of the dark, so he just tosses the garbage bags in the broom closet and runs back home!  His parents never check to see if the boy is doin’ his errands right.””

 

 

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When the Hallways Talk.

A short story from the past.

For hours, JeVaughn Willard sat in his recliner, frowning at the sporadic thuds and rolling rumbles echoing through the Sage Pointe Condominium building.  He took another puff of his Kools and listened hard.  The sounds came and went with no discernible pattern, bouncing off the walls and rattling his nerves.  He strained his ears, trying to pinpoint the source, but the building’s acoustics made it maddeningly elusive.  He slid out of his recliner and ambled over to the picture window.  He pushed aside the slats of the Venetian blinds and was glad he was not in the howling thunderstorm.  JeVaughn returned to his recliner.

As the clock struck eight, he took a break from reading his latest mystery novel.  His overflowing garbage bin finally gave him a reason to investigate the noise in the hallway.  He grabbed the bag and shuffled out into the dimly lit hallway, trying to keep his ragged brown corduroy slippers from flying off of his feet.  The carpet muffled his footsteps, but the strange racket had grown louder.  Then, as he rounded a corner, the mystery revealed itself.

Two neighborhood kids, the brood of the Reverand and Mrs. Stankle, were tearing up and down the long corridor, kicking a slightly deflated soccer ball between their feet.

Bam!  The ball slammed against a wall, leaving a faint smudge before careening into the air.

Thud!  The ball rebounded off the ceiling, narrowly missing a flickering light sconce as it came down.

JeVaughn Willard sighed, the corners of his mouth twitching with restrained annoyance.  He trudged to the garbage chute and let the bag drop with a hollow clang, watching it disappear into the void.

“Pointless,” he muttered under his breath, sparing one last glance at the kids.  They laughed and shouted, blissfully unaware of their disruptive echoes.

JeVaughn tightened his terry cloth robe and shuffled back to his door.  “No use mentioning it to their parents,” he thought grimly.  “The reverend’s sermons are loud enough.  I don’t need him aiming one at me!”

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Fusty Skunk, Rotting Fish.

When I lived at the Sage Pointe Condominiums, I never knew which putrid odor would ambush my unsuspecting nose when I opened my door to the hallway or when I stepped on or off the elevator.

The hallway had its own olfactory roulette wheel.  Some days the marijuana smelled like musky, gassy skunk.  Other days it hit like rotting fish drenched in pungent patchouli.  Sometimes it was a perfect blend of old, fusty socks and rank elephant.  Sometimes it smelled of eucalyptus.  Add to that the lingering smell of cheap cologne and cigarettes, greasy sausage, and those scents stayed for hours, only to fade and make room for the next dreadful strain of stench.

One of the building’s finest “amenities” was the elevator, which faithfully preserved the perfume of whoever rode it last.  I have taken rides perfumed by Grandma Weede’s lingering skunky marijuana haze from an hour earlier.  On other days, the odor du jour was a baffling mix of candy‑sweet pre‑teen bath and body sprays and lotions from the Stankle girls.  It was a combination that somehow managed to get stronger the farther down you travelled on the elevator car.

Mrs. Stankle, on her own, specialized in mysterious stenches that defied classification.  Some days it was sugary carrots, and other days it was akin to coconut-musk that went terribly wrong.  And sometimes it was something so indescribable that the only reasonable response was to pray for deliverance.

Adonis was no different.  If he didn’t just return from the gym dripping with smelly sweat, he reeked of a potent blend of sweat and Drakkar Noir, a combination that could have knocked a grown adult back a full step or two.  His life is lived in bold, glossy strokes of sweat, swagger, and spectacle.

Then there’s the Weede Family, whose contributions varied by the hour.  Their hallway offerings ranged from “forest‑floor funk” to “burnt tire with herbal aspirations.”  Or they left the elevator lingering with the aroma of greasy chicken or the tang of old tacos.  Their door was like a portal to a different dimension, one where ventilation systems and their filters went to die.

One entire floor in one of the complex’s buildings reeked of cheap cigarette tobacco that emanated from just one condo unit.

Then there was the smell of wet dog, musty dog, stale dog.  It emerged unpredictably, but usually in the late afternoons, and clung to the elevator walls until it was finally overpowered by some other mysterious stench.

The elevator contributed its own disturbing whiffs of diesel fuel, and that’s a story for another day.

Rarely did the hallways offer the uplifting aromas of barbecue or simmering spaghetti sauce.  When I brought my dog home from his Spa Day appointment, he became a walking air freshener— sort of a jasmine-lavender-powdery scent that lasts until his next appointment.  Since my condo retains this scent, I imagine he also left his trail through the hallways and elevator, just like everyone else, so maybe it was disturbing to others.

At Sage Pointe, the smells changed by the hour because there was always someone contributing to the fragrant or stinky bouquet.  Rarely—oh so rarely—did the hallways offer the comforting aromas of barbecue or sweet baked cakes.  Those scents were the rarities of Sage Pointe: imagined, longed for, and almost certainly elusive.

 

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The Stankles.

I lived in a large mid‑rise building, the kind with long hallways, welcoming vestibules, perpetually humming vents, and a cast of neighbors who could each anchor their own documentary.  Life at the Sage Pointe Condominiums was never dull, especially if you had a sensitive nose.  In today’s essay, I’d like to introduce you to one of our more… aromatic residents.  I have lived in buildings that have friendly doormen or fresh flowers in the lobby, and a dedicated cleaning crew that cleaned and deodorized a couple times a week.  However, at Sage Pointe Condominiums we had odors—layered and evolving.

Whenever I opened my front door or step off the elevator, I braced myself.  I never knew what invisible cloud would greet me, or what new olfactory assault would come barreling toward my unsuspecting nose.

The most infamous contributors were Adonis and his family, whom I privately referred to as The Stankles.  If it were scientifically possible for a scent to take physical form, they would have travelled through life surrounded by a perpetual soft green fog, something between a cartoonish stink cloud and a government chemical weapons test.  Each member of the family seemed to believe that the only way to apply cologne was to marinate in it.  Not spritz.  Not dab.  Marinate.

When that throat‑tightening, eye‑watering haze slapped me across the face, I know exactly what it means: The Stankles had either left for work and school or had triumphantly returned.  They lived on the opposite end of the hallway from me, which maked the reach of their fumes all the more impressive.  For the stench to drift all the way to my wing, it must have been clinging to them like a second skin, and through all seven layers, too.

I imagined inside their condominium.  In my mind, a greenish mist hung in the air like a permanently stagnant weather system.  The scent must have ripened throughout the week, as it settled into the carpet, the curtains, the couch cushions, the walls; every surface absorbing a different note from each family member’s chosen fragrance.  One of them preferred something sharp and citrusy, another something musky and sweet, another something like patchouli mixed with body odor, and yet another something that smelled like a gas station bathroom trying its best.  The combination was… unique.

The elevator, of course, had its own adventure.  It faithfully recorded the comings and goings of the building’s most pungent citizens.  Step inside, and you could tell instantly whether The Stankles had recently passed through.  But they weren’t the only ones who left their mark.

There’s The Princess, whose perfume was so distinctive it might as well be trademarked.  She rocked through the building with her dogs like a scented comet, leaving behind a shimmering trail of powdery, floral, dirt, and a slightly sweaty body odor insistence.  And then there was the unmistakable contribution of The Weede Family, whose fusty skunk aroma drifted through the vents with the determination of a creature lazily seeking freedom.

Their stories and their scents deserved essays of their own.  And believe me, I’ll get to them in future essays.  Life at the Sage Pointe Condominiums provides no shortage of material.  For now, consider this your first whiff of the cast of characters who made my building unforgettable in ways I never asked for.

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