Whenever the honeysuckle starts to bloom, I’m reminded of the spring when everyone decided it was a great idea for me to ride the back seat of a tandem bicycle with my father-in-law. He wasn’t even my father-in-law yet, which made this imposed, volun-told decree even more profoundly horrible.

My face became blank as my boyfriend’s brothers disclosed we would ride bicycles 40-something miles into Philadelphia to attend an event known as The Wall Bike Race. “We gotta go,” the men of the family committed, not so much an agreement as an expectation. “Lauren can ride with Dad,” was added soon thereafter, though I can’t remember by whom. “You’ll be fine,” they chanted like a family of elephants, their low frequency rumbles signaling agreement.

Instead of questioning my threshold for physical endurance, or my interest in riding 40+ miles on a bike, each boy only smiled, giddy to have found a convert to suit up in bike shorts and a pair of clip shoes.

Within the first mile riding behind the old man, I learned that riding the back of a tandem is an intimate acquaintance. It’s about learning the rise and fall of the body and the swift change of cadence required with every undulating hill and curving road. The push and pull on the pedals become an unwritten dance expressed through small signals, undetectable by most spectators, communicating the journey’s needs between riders.

What started as my nonchalant approach to this task quickly morphed into a bleaker reality. For starters, the backseat of a tandem bicycle includes a much more limited sightline than imagined. What could have been a pleasant cruise through the countryside, marking some of the towns’ most delightful features, quickly became something else entirely. Because the insane speed and revolutions per minute (RPMs) determined by my pilot demanded concentration, I found myself hunkered down in the saddle, keeping my posture fixed on progress. Such concentration meant the only sight available to me was the backside of my future FIL’s cycling shorts. And contained within those shorts were various things I really did not want to think about, let alone stare at for 3 hours.

And yet I did.

If the sight wasn’t enough, I quickly learned that various sounds accompany the ride. The type of ride this family enjoyed did not offer the casual conversation of beach goers on banana seats, baskets in tow, riding toward the general store. When keeping pace with the peloton, there is determination and a taste of victory in the voice of the leader. I was shocked by phrases like, “Come on!”, “Almost there!”, “Yes! Yes!” and “Bear Down,” none of which offered clues about whether to pedal faster or slower, and all of which sounded something like the uncomfortable squeals of an elderly couple’s love making, grunts and moans indicating neither pleasure or pain, but something else closer to sustained frustration.

But the sights and sounds still weren’t enough to teach me the deep rooted belly pains of regret. It was the crescendo, the unmistakable smells rolling through, aimed at my nostrils with the precision of an attempted missile strike, that helped me to see the error of my ways.

I must preface my shock with some context, or an acknowledgement of how I grew up. As a family growing up, my mother, sister, father, and I did not participate in any overly sweaty physical exertions. We enjoyed museums and Broadways shows, trips to the Caribbean and the occasional beachside barbeque. I’ll even admit that some afternoons, we found ourselves at the counters of Macys, Bloomingdales, or Bath and Body Works, spritzing an array of misty delights that could make us smell nicer, sweeter, and softer. In our family, the aggregate of sweat, blood, and tears were not prized possessions, nor were the toils of hard labor in which a person might amass sweaty socks, armpit stained t-shirts, or compression shorts. (Full disclosure: I had never even heard of compression shorts until meeting my husband).

I didn’t know at first if it was merely the smell of sweat in front of me or something worse: perhaps another man in the group had delivered this overt and overwhelming musk. But I’ve since learned that the toils of muscular exertion and endurance involve the permeation of a special kind of smell that comes from no other place but the ballsack. There is nothing quite like a sweaty ballsack. This distinct smell informs those around it that something long and hairy will disrupt all peace once found in the nostrils.

My introduction to this olfactory cacophony was nothing less than a requiem. The sights, the sounds, and finally the smells created an unforgettable, unforgivable recipe for aversion at the highest level. I will never endure a tandem bike ride with my FIL again.

The saving grace in all of this is, as always, the distribution and consumption of knowledge. Because through this experience, I will pass onto my own children an insight they can carry for years to come. This is the knowledge that, in this world, we share space with others. And caring for our own human, in all its senses, can start or stop a moment in its tracks, carving out a memory that can never be undone. We must all think before we act. This lesson carries for all parties involved.

Hours into the ride, we finally approached the city, the skyline not quite visible, but the change in the pavement signaled the coming of the home stretch. The old man before me turned slightly, gripping the handlebars to steady himself and shouted behind, “Do you smell that?”

I couldn’t fathom that the man smelled his own nuts, so I pedaled in silence, feigning that I had not heard him. When I didn’t respond, he piped in.

“It’s honeysuckle season,” he said. “That’s the honeysuckle.”

“Ohh,” I groaned back. “Cool.”

But in the back of my mind, I wondered if this sort of moment could have been the sort that prompted a kindly and gracious individual to invent spray deodorant.

#sprayyournuts

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Kimberly Emilia holds a BA in English from The College of William and Mary, an MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University, and an MEd in Multicultural Education from Eastern University. Previous publications can be found in various magazines, including Philadelphia Stories, Weave Magazine, Spirit Magazine, Defenestration, and Cynic Magazine, among others.