Ode de Eau de Zoey

Jeremy Elson
March 31, 1998

The Story Behind The Story

When I met her, I had recently moved to a new city where I didn't have many friends, and was having trouble finding my niche, socially. Then, I met Zoey, and we became good friends -- and practically overnight, things changed completely! Suddenly I was meeting lots of people and made more friends in 6 months than I had in 5 years of college.

Zoey and I used to joke that because the change happened at the same time that I met her, she must have been the cause. "You must give off some sort of pheremone that rubbed off on me," I told her once. We soon called this substance Eau de Zoey.

One day in March I wrote Zoey email and mentioned this magical fragrance, but accidentally wrote Ode de Zoey, instead of Eau. Oops. The following email exchange followed.

From: Jeremy Elson
  To: Zohar xxxxx
Subj: Re: friends are so cool 
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 18:29:07 -0500
-----------------

Zohar xxxxx writes:
>Ode de Zoey?  Or, Eau de Zoey?  Am I a scent or a lyrical poem?  Not that
>I mind being either, by the way.  

Uh oh, my ignorance of foreign languages is showing.  Well I'm sure I
meant Ode de Eau de Zoey, the 10-stanza lyrical poem I recently wrote
espousing the beauty of the fragrance that is... Zoey.


Ode de Eau de Zoey

For all of the lonely, those bachelors inept
at games of love, who have lost and have wept

There still remains hope, though not in a potion
It is not an elixer, nor is it a lotion

Is it a substance?  Perhaps.  Yet still quite ethereal;
it can not be applied, nor eaten like cereal

It is a fragrance so subtle, sublime and divine
and it cannot be found in the sea, nor the Rhine

A magical scent, it is, to be sure--
it brings confidence, dates, companions, and more

One application (with dinner) is merely required
and the subject will truly seem quite inspired

Its source is quite singular, altogether unique;
it comes from a person -- of a woman, I speak

Her smile's infectious, her laughter a song
And the scent?  She exudes it, and it works for quite long

This scent can't be bottled, neither purchased nor sold
though it works on the young as well as the old

But if you ask her: "please come", or in Hebrew say "Boi!"
then you too, perhaps, will have Eau de Zoey.

fin.

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