I think I’ve looked at more code today than I had in the previous several years combined. I remember very little about my day. It’s a blurry mish-mash of semicolons and XML snippets. My wrists ache. I don’t know what time I woke up. I don’t know who I talked to. I don’t remember what I had for lunch, and I don’t know where my fingers have been.

Do you ever wonder where your fingers have been, and then suddenly have the urge to smell them?

Yeah. Me, neither. That’s disgusting. The only reason I wrote that was in the hopes that you would feel you had found a kindred spirit, be overcome by the moment, and shout “Yes, Rory! Yes! I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I’ve been waiting for years to meet another fingersmeller. I’m not alone – there are others like me. Rejoice! Rejoice! I am a fingersmeller! Rejoice!”

I was going to give myself bonus points if you shouted all of that in an office setting, but if you really are a fingersmeller, then you probably aren’t working in an office since you would have gotten fired the first time you got caught raising your digits to your nose to take that tempting whiff.

I bet there are still people back there at your old work who talk about you.

“Hey, you know who I was thinking about the other day?”

“Nope.”

“Biff. Do you remember Biff?”

“Oh, yeah. The fingersmeller…”

That’s how you’re remembered. Your ex-coworkers have a vague recollection of your first name, but quickly dispose of its use as soon as it’s been placed in the context of the smeller of fingers (you). That’s all they care about now.

That big reporting database you wrote that saved everybody so much time? Nope. Nobody remembers.

Just you, your fingers, and smelling. That’s it. That’s your legacy.

Anyway, speaking of fingersmellers, I spend a lot of my time away from home. Sometimes it’s to go to other states where I get up in front of large groups of people and pretend to know things about stuff, while other times it’s just to go work in cafes so that I don’t have to spend every last waking minute in my apartment during the weeks when I’m not out pretending.

Today I sat in the cafe at Powell’s Books. Powell’s is a legendary bookstore. I’ve met three-eyed inbreds from the Appalachians who couldn’t determine their own names (or species), but who demonstrated a casual awareness of Powell’s at first mention. It’s a store that people (and people-like things) know about.

That makes it an attraction. I go to the Powell’s cafe as much to people-watch as I do to work.

As a touchtypist, I often treat the other people-watchers to the singularly creepy experience of getting to watch a grown man allow his neck a full 180 degrees of rotation while pounding out an email to some person or another. When I really want to show off, I’ll start typing a paragraph and then lean over, still typing, and ask you if you know what time it is. While you fiddle around with your stuff, trying to find a timepiece, I just stare at you intently and occasionally cock a brow as I continue to write, edit, and then send the email I’ve been working on since we first made eye-contact.

I don’t ask because I don’t know myself what time it is – I travel with three phones and at least one laptop everywhere I go, so it’s not like I don’t have access to a clock. I ask about the time because I want you to feel inferior to me during the brief tenure of our relationship. You might have a beautiful wife, an expensive car, and an expensive house in which to park it, but you’ll walk away from our exchange thinking, “I really thought I was something, but that extremely good looking guy was able to type while asking me what time it was. I think I’ll go kill myself now.”

Oh, yeah: fingersmellers.

Got a little off track back there. Sorry.

So, today, I sat down at a long table in the middle of the cafe, directly across from the only other person at the table. I thought it would make him uncomfortable since there were about six other available seats, none of which had people sitting in them. Portlanders are really passive-aggressive, and lately I’ve taken it upon myself to expose them to direct confrontation wherever possible.

He squirmed a little. I figured he would. For a Portlander, this is enough social interaction with a stranger to induce spontaneous human combustion. I don’t know how how he handled it. I was impressed.

Within a few minutes, like the elastic strap on a fresh S&M ball-gag, the situation loosened up a little and the tension eased. He had settled into a nice rhythm of ignoring me, and I had gotten busy trying to read his books upside-down while drinking my tea. He didn’t seem to mind. He just went on ignoring.

I also looked him up and down. He looked tough and had all the piercings, tattoos, and other obligatory signs of rank in the Army of Disgruntled Modern Portlander Faux-Punks.

His books were weird, and were the first sign to me that he was probably a fingersmeller.

They were oversized hardcovers filled with illustrations that looked like they might have come out of some museum somewhere, but which were probably originally airbrushed onto the back of a van, photographed, and then scanned in for use in this book.

Pictures of things like wizards in black hats bending their wicked spells against the hapless, innocent unicorn fairy. Stuff like that. It was one of those books.

He stopped for a long time on a page which had a title that was something like, “Recipe for Blood Dog Soup.” The font was odd, so I couldn’t quite make out all of it, but the word “Recipe” was definitely in the title.

By the time I was halfway through reading the recipe and wondering which of my highly sophisticated friends to invite over for a Blood Dog Soup party, my gentleman’s phone rang. He picked it up and spoke with all the gruff that his years of smoking Camel Straights while drinking down Blood Dog Soup could provide him.

I loved this conversation. I only heard half of it, but it was clearly of one bad guy telling a woman How It Is:

“Yeah. Hello?… Uh, yeah… yeah…”

I leaned in closer to get the second half of the Blood Dog Soup recipe. His conversation continued:

“Uh-huh… No. No. Uh-… I don’t want to argue about it, so no… Nope…”

Things were getting heated. The guy really did look agitated by this point:

“I said no. I’m not arguing about this. I’m not comin’ home tonight. That’s it… What?”

I thought, now this is the way to break up with your girlfriend. It continued:

“Really? Oh… I still say no… Uh-huh. Yeah…. Uh-huh… OK.”

And, finally, the end of this one-sided poem:

“Talk to you later, mom.”

Fingersmeller.