Laurence (never Larry) Parsons guarded the border between Canada and the US with the kind of confidence that only comes with a great mustache Thick and full without being bushy, it defined his face in a way that none of his other features had ever managed to do. And he knew the ladies loved it. It was a mustache that invited riders.

One of the great pleasures of his job was the view commanded by his elevated booth. He was at the perfect height to truly appreciate the ladies who were coming back to America, in the way he knew they loved to be appreciated, especially when they wore low cut shirts. In his mirrored sunglasses and shining mustache he all but screamed “WELCOME BACK TO AMERICA, WHERE WE LOVE YOU, LADIES.” In return the ladies gladly gave him a good look at the tops of their boobs. It was one of the silent agreements that keeps this nation great, and was recapitulated many times a day, especially in summer. God, how he loved summer in the booth.

Then one day a very special lady showed him the universe. It was early July, just getting hot, and this lady had dressed for maximum coolness. In later years he would ponder whether she’d actually been wearing a shirt. She certainly should have been: there was quite a lot to cover. But the best part of all was that this lady had money, and had spent some of it on importing a sporty little right hand drive Aston Martin. Which meant when it was time to hand him her passport, she had to lean way over while simultaneously arching her back and reaching up to him. As he took his customary and expected look, Laurence felt a heat that had nothing to do with July and everything to do with the passion that burned in his soul. In those seconds wave after wave of heat rolled through him. He was a great roiling pot of lasciviousness, barely kept from boiling over by the lid of uniformed professionalism. But when she leaned in further, when she showed him even more, when the tips of her exquisitely manicured inch and a half long fingernails lightly brushed his black leather glove as he took her documents, he couldn’t help himself.

He licked his mustache.

The tongue popped out of the left corner of his mouth and started moving smoothly to the right. It slowed slightly as it climbed the masculine mass of bristles heaped on his nasal-labial trough, before sliding down the other side and slipping back into his mouth. It was a subtle sign, but one that it was desperately important that he shared with her. He wanted the lady to know how much he appreciated her offering. She had done her duty spectacularly, and now he would do his.

But as he opened his mouth to ask the lady what the purpose of her visit to Canada had been, a second and unexpected round of sensual overload broadsided him. His taste buds suddenly felt as huge as mountains. Somehow they were no longer contained by his mouth, but had shot up through the roof and directly into his brain. In their brief trip over his glorious mustache they had picked up so much information, and now they were desperately trying to make sense of it all. The melange of tastes from the mustache was unlocking a hoard of memories, some long buried.

Slight hint of pickle from yesterday’s sandwich: a long procession of sandwiches, going back for years

and years, perhaps decades.  But really only one sandwich, reincarnated day after day on his kitchen counter, taking many different guises, but always recognizable by its sigil of four precisely placed slices of bread-and-butter pickle. Between being born and being consumed, there was never enough time for the sandwich soul to work off whatever karmic debt condemned it to this endless cycle. Laurence saw that it would continue until that fateful day when he forgot to bring the sandwich with him to work, a thing that had never happened and never would, because he was a professional.

Bitter note of nicotine from his pack-a -day habit:  the shade of his long dead uncle Carl was summoned. Carl was the man who had taught him to appreciate the ladies, at least mechanically, if not spiritually. “Lookit the tits on that one,” “lookit the ass on that one,” “lookit the legs on that one,” Carl would whisper in young Laurence’s ear as they walked through town. He was a joyless man, who seemed to see the ladies like walking versions of the diagrams numbering all the parts of a particular model in the front of an auto repair manual. Still his eye was perfect, and most of what Laurence knew of aesthetics had come from him. It was surprising when the lady Carl eventually married (after prolonged bachelorhood) didn’t exhibit any of the qualities he had mercilessly pointed out. His uncle seemed more taken with  her large hands, rugged jawline, and pronounced Adam’s apple.

Tang of stale Budweiser: and he was hit in the face with a dead skunk, the only animal he had ever killed, driving home the first time of many where he nearly lost his virginity to Gwen Cartwright, his high school girlfriend. His mind full of frustration and awe (the young lady had let him touch her left boob through her poncho for five seconds before saying, “that’s enough for now”), he had only seen the black and white creature for a split second before it went under his tires, but the smell had lingered for weeks. To this day he found the smell of skunk erotic and shameful.

All-pervading saltiness of sweat: Laurence found himself floating in endless warmth. Everything was dark. There was no sound but the bass thump of his mother’s heartbeat. Everywhere was the taste and smell of amniotic fluid and blood, building him up, turning him into a human and a man, more and more, until he moved out into the light, into the air and the world, about to encounter the first pair of lady’s boobs he would ever appreciate…

And with that the tastes abruptly receded and Laurence found himself shaking in his booth coming down from what he would later find out from a friend with New Age-ish tendencies was called a “rebirthing experience.” Shaken to his core, he gave the lady her passport back, mumbled something about hoping she would enjoy being back in America and waved her on. Then he switched the light above his booth to red, oblivious to the angry honking of the line of cars that were still waiting to be processed. He sank to his knees disappearing behind the glass partition.

When he was sure he couldn’t be seen, he licked his mustache again.