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He found himself again inside the boy's dorm of Bullworth Academy.
Very luxurious, we have to say it: Jimmy was at a point in his life where a floor that wasn't sticky was weird to him, and most of all, he treated the pregnant fragrance of sweat and cigarettes like a Jean Paul Gaultier perfume.
Mr. Gaultier is not a random reference we are doing. Inside the "Bullworth Stench" perfume, there was a note out of place. Sweat, cigarettes, disinfectant, old books... Le Male?
The answer lies in Bullworth's inside scoops: some people say that a good willing preppie has been in that dorm, and may have left that exact fragrance.
To do what? Or to do who, as the sexually frustrated bullies would say? We do not know, and it is not of our interest.
As narrators, we can only say that in Bullworth's male dormitory, you could smell the concept of class war. In this case, between bullies and Preppies (no one cares about the nerds, some of them just collaborated to the sweat smell anyway).
In Jimmy's perspective, it was only the strangest stench he had ever experienced.
And he smelled many things and people.
Jimmy was always surrounded by odours. Strong and distinctive ones: rain, burnt hay and plants, pollen, meals from the house's windows, especially the strong garlic-y smell some kitchens emanated. Then smoke, smog, the sewers, cigarettes, weed, trash, piss. The only way he could get a pause, was washing himself, smelling whatever "musk" soap or shampoo he used. They never smelled like real musk.
The only fragrances he ever smelled were cheap female ones. Generic sweet smells, that only translated as chemical in Jimmy's nose: some of those made him cough uncontrollably, making his mother furious.
Jimmy closed his dorm room.
He wasn't making anything with his kit, so the room was with almost no smell. Just some humidity.
He decided to open the window anyway: his nose was overstimulated by the Marxist fragrance of the corridor. The room was small, so the air got better immediately. Jimmy sighed, in relief. He wasn't a clean freak, but it was always a change of pace to just have a breeze on his face, without associating it to anything else other than just wind.
He got in his pyjamas: the usual skull shirt and the baggy pants he used for almost anything that didn't involve the school uniform. The pants had a faint trace of his mother's perfume, while the shirt was miracously smelling like detergent. Still, very faint.
Jimmy closed the window and got started on unpacking more things: he didn't have much but didn't want to leave the big sports bag on the floor either. There, he found his cracked MP3 player. It barely smelled of plastic.
After a grimace, he took it and got in bed to listen to some music, as he didn't do that ever since musicotherapy failed for him... But maybe it was just because of the annoyingly new age-y instructors: alone, Jimmy resorted to music sometimes, especially when he was stressed.
That made him not hear his door knocking. He thought he had finished the social interactions for the day, so he kept the volume of the headphones pretty high: he wasn't new to loud music directly in his ears.
The knocking turned into punches on his door, and that made him jump. The MP3 player was swiftly under the covers, and Jimmy got in alert again.
"Yeah?"
As if it was an open sesame spell, Gary barged inside the room.
"Ah. It's you."
"What? Not happy to see your only friend?"
Gary loved to turn the knife in the wound.
"What do you want?"
"Plan for tomorrow!"
Both Jimmy and Gary were ready for that dynamic: Gary, at the center of the room, in front of the bed speaking for his forum (population: 1), while Jimmy listened at the edge of the covers.
And it was exactly that. Gary planned another way to sabotage the Jocks and not make them qualify for the town's school championships.
"And then, if they know we are in charge of their success... They'll be our bitches"
To Jimmy, this sounded funny. Gary, who was comparable to a scrawny weak kid compared to those big apes, talked about making those macho men his bitches.
If anything, Gary was the one that was more likely to be made a bitch. He waited a bit to let that sit in his mind: surely no one knew how Gary was in a position of weakness, even though he may not have the muscle to backup his dignity. For a short while, Jimmy wanted to know that. Just innocent interest, right?
"If they don't do that to us first"
Jimmy was careful to not let out that thought, talking about a generic "us", but that wasn't enough: every single time Jimmy brought up the possibility of failure, Gary tensed up. A failure in his plans? Humiliation. Pure humiliation.
"You don't know what I AM capable of. They could beat YOU to death but they won't do shit to me."
"Whatever you say."
That declaration of surrender, somewhat angered Gary more. He got closer to Jimmy and grabbed his collar.
"Don't get cocky, Hopkins. Physical difference doesn't mean anything in this war."
Not the war analogies. Gary loved those.
"But the strongest one wins, no?"
Jimmy wasn't daring or anything. The tone, was annoyingly matter-of fact.
Gary got closer. Jimmy breathed in deeply. He never got this close to Gary, but expected him to smell either like the soap in the dorm bathrooms (he saw him as the clean freak type, in his perspective those pills had to mean something), or disgustingly like cigarettes.
But Gary didn't smell neither good or bad. He had absolutely no scent or stink. Near Gary, the only thing Jimmy was feeling was warmth on his skin, given by their body temperatures fusing.
Neither his nape, hair, body, smelled like anything.
Gary was absolutely scentless.
And unconsciously, Jimmy was even more weirded out and almost scared. Many times, to identify people, Jimmy used his nose. Gary was unidentifiable, unpredictable.
"Listen, new kid... Don't play smart with me"
Gary grabbed the collar of the already crumpled black shirt. But all Jimmy did was looking at his mouth. Not even Gary's breath smelled like anything.
"You're the brawns, I am the brain."
He wasn't listening much, he remained stoic in that role-defining speech, because he was fixating on something weirder.
"Understand?"
They were both scentless. Every external odour on Jimmy's clothes faded completely with time, and Gary was just naturally without smell.
It's the one thing they both shared. The possibility to be anything, be eerily adaptable to situations, not make anyone know your lifestyle via your smell. They were both the weird enigmas of Bullworth, judged only by their external attitudes and assumptions about them, because no one was able to get close to their essence.
Jimmy remained silent to that question, and just looked at Gary. For once in his life, Jimmy found kinship. Kinship, mixed with fear. He was also subject of the uncertainity of Gary's nature, which made him always cautious. Now, he knew exactly why. It was because deep down, that psycho was exactly like him.
Maybe, Gary had a similiar realization. We can't know, his attitude just got way calmer. Calculated.
The grip on Jimmy's shirt got tighter, and this made his adrenaline rise up.
"So what'cha want? Gonna try to show me who's the bitch?"
What a tastefully obscene phrase. It's unknown whether Gary said that on purpose, or he let that proposal slip out. We can only say that blood wasn't rushing to Jimmy's fists or anything, but straight to his penis. His pants were a dead giveaway. Jimmy brushed that off as just a secondary reaction to fighting adrenaline, but plain and simple: he was getting horny.
So, his hormones suggested kissing Gary. He roughly grabbed his head and made their lips basically hit eachother. What's funny, is that Gary didn't even flinch or detach himself. It was as if he knew everything.
Usually, during these scenes we could say the air smelled like teenage hormones or anything like it.
But we have no idea if Gary was leaning in because of pleasure, for compliance, and/or for future manipulation. And on Jimmy's part, it's questionable whether what he felt could translate in a true connection with Gary, or if he just didn't jack off that day.
No one was able to tell what the other could do. Maybe that was the reason they were always around eachother.