Summer must be here because the aural rape of the Mr. Softee truck is back. Noise pollution is too gentle a description. The Mr. Softee noise is sometimes so loud that it hurts my stomach. It’s some of the most violent noise I experience, and while many people find it annoying I think my reaction is probably stronger. Maybe I have noise allergies.

I am not a loud person. I can not compete for attention on volume. As I explained to someone recently: If you want to win an argument with me, just yell louder. It doesn’t take much, and you will always win, whether you are right, wrong, or something else. We don’t even have to be arguing about anything — just yell and you will win.

I have literally run from the Mr. Softee truck. Once last summer I was on 29th Street walking toward the bridge when the Mr. Softee truck came barreling down the street blasting its noise at full bore, as loud as possible. I covered my ears and do not exaggerate when I say I that I ran. I ran to the corner and walked one block over to 30th Street to start my trip over.

But the Mr. Softee truck appeared on 30th Street a few moments later, blasting its noise in search of customers on that street. That one day I could not escape, and I remember crouching a little bit each time the noise blasted the silence away.

I haven’t noticed it yet this year, but in the past the Mr. Softee music was so loud and abrupt that it set off car alarms, turning a quiet street into an auditory hell hole.

I’ve been in various places where the cacophony simply rapes my mind, like a chain flossing my brain. Often this happens at nightclubs and bars, but everyday scenes have no shortage of possibilities for gut-crushing noise.

Noise and nasty odors affect me most in the gut. In fact, all sounds seem to affect me there, which partly explains why I don’t like listening to certain types of music while eating.

Noise doesn’t have to be loud, either, to get into me. Sounds of people arguing, engaged in spiteful sounding bickering, is as violent to my system as a parking lot full of blaring car alarms. With Mr. Softee I know the sheer volume makes its impact but the character of the sound is equally obscene. The timbre is just nasty to me, and every pick of that amplified music box feels like a smacking and spitting onto my face.

I once worked in an office that was under construction. Workers were tearing it up and re-building, producing plenty of simultaneous noise. Jackhammers, drills, workers yelling obscenities. I worked very long hours like that, because it took a full 10-hour day to accomplish about an hour of work. And I remember not eating there for days.

It reminded me of trying to sleep in coach class on an Amtrak train. I would set aside 14 hours in which to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep. On a Greyhound bus the number of hours required tripled, and it was amazing to get 5 hours of sleep in a 24 hour stretch.

I can tolerate individual loud sounds. I remember once in Virginia waking to the sounds of a mighty jackhammer drilling a hole in a parking lot. I loved that sound. I found it musical. It went to my gut, just like all sounds, but its purity had a cleansing feel about it.

Polecat, — or skunk, as it is sometimes called — is my favorite scent. Certain textured scents of horse shit make my eyes water, but not not quite in revulsion. I loved the smell of horse shit in Elfers, Florida; and cow shit in Rheatown, Tennessee.