Rigor Mortis

There's nothing that can inspire you to run like a room full of dead bodies. I spent four hours today with my hands immersed in bowel and bile-- probing pancreas, massaging mesocolon, and oggling omentum. After standing in one spot over a semi-rotting body for so long, one feels the urge to move-- not only to flee the scene of decomposition, but also to exercise the right to exercise; a right that my donor no longer possesses. In a way, my run today was an homage to my benevolent instructor (the donor), who inspired me to "shake it while i got it."

However, for those of you who have not had the pleasure of jamming your appendages into the deepest darkest recesses of the human body...(I just realized that that introductory phrase could be misinterpreted as a euphemism for coitus. I am not referring to coitus, grow up)...as I was saying- for those of you who can not fathom the mystery of mesentery, you must understand that dead people, regardless of the preservation process, stink. The stench varies from body to body, and my donor emits (thankfully) a relatively tolerable odor. Relatively is the keyword. The scent is indescribable, but I imagine an elderly recluse-- you know that musty "old person" smell?-- now leave that recluse unbathed for a solid ten years, add some fetid bacteria-infested sewer water, and you may begin to understand the complexity of this odor. Now, you must also understand that the smell of cadaver is remarkably clingy. It grabs your clothes, your hair, your skin, and sometimes it seems like it doesn't leave unless you scrub til you bleed.

That being said, I decided not to shower between my dissection and heading to the gym. Hence, I stanked. I stanked bad. I also have not washed my running clothes this week (and I have already put in a solid fifteen miles). So as I hopped on the treadmill next to a cute Middle-Eastern girl I became self-conscious of my stank. Would she notice the smell of death oozing out my pores with every stride? She mistake this nasty DBO (dead body odor) for regular BO? Luckily, I didn't care what this girl thought. However, there was a cute girl a few treadmills down that I saw the night before at the gym. She runs like a gazelle, and (though I've yet to be close enough) I presume she smells like cinnamon and sunshine. So the question soon begged itself: how far did my stench of death reach? What was my range? Would the gazelle be forced to suffer the DBO instead of my usual enticing musk? Would my passion for human anatomy and my overzealous approach to the peritoneum undermine my passion for beautiful women and my underzealous approach to flirtation?? My question was soon answered as the gazelle leapt from her treadmill and fled to an elliptical a few rows down. She had smelled me.

But who needs her? I have my education.