The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House
Dorothy Allison on place: 
[pg. 11] You were in that room with him when he said no, he did not want you, and you walked out of the room and it felt as if you were bleeding into your own belly. You went down the stairs, out into the night, and you smelled—what did you smell? Was there the distinct odor of spilled beer on the steps? Were you thinking about how when your daddy left that was all that you could smell on the front steps after he was gone? Is it torn-up weeds you smell? Somebody was sitting on those steps earlier and she was crying, and she didn’t have anything else so she reached down and pulled up the grass and ripped it, and you can smell the torn grass in the air.
Or is it your own skin? You had put on perfume. You had bathed carefully. You had washed your hair. You had used that new soap with lavender scent and flowers. You wanted to be wanted, and no one can ever understand how terrible it felt to be told, no, I don’t want you. But you smell your skin, and it stinks of sour disappointment, and you don’t want you. You can understand why he didn’t want to have sex with you. That’s place—the smell in the air, the memory, the association. It’s all history. You are somebody real who comes from somewhere, and you have been hurt in specific, deep, terrible ways.
—The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, $18.95
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