The thunderstorms from last night left this morning with a faint smell of summer in the city. It's a smell I will always associate with my first day in New York. I remember it raining for the first weeks I lived here.

There is a different quality to the smell of warm rain in the city. The concrete landscape prevents the rainwater from seeping into the ground. Without topsoil to absorb the rain, it pools on the sidewalk, and the ledges of buildings, beads on glass faces; the city marinates in its rain, and all the smokes, the soots, the smogs that flavor the air of the city concentrate, brew in the rainwater. In the city you smell the rain, and the rain smells like the city itself.

Scent drives to the essence of the the thing. The smell of a girls body, the trace it leaves on your pillow, your sheets, after she had laid with you. It is the smell of the girl, it is the smell of all girls. It is the smell of girl.

Fresh cut grass is what Home smells like. Tobacco is what Dad smells like. My father is the slightly stale but masculine smell of Tareyton cigarettes and Mitchum deodorant.

I remember after high school football games, everybody putting on cologne before seeing the girls. CK1 is the smell of adolescence.