I’m taking a break from the studio right now because it stinks of kerosene (I was using it to rehydrate some patina wax).

The smell reminds me of the tail end of an adventurous night some years ago that I spent with two of my gay boys, Ritchie and Jean Marc.

We were coming back from the beach and wanted to wash our feet off so we stopped off at this corner where there was a standpipe on the side of the road. And old woman was filling up water bottles.

She offered us one of the bottles so Jean Marc and I started rinsing our feet and noticed the water had a slippery feel to it. Then the fumes hit me and I yelled, “It’s kerosene!”

We looked up to find the lady and in the space of five seconds she had completely disappeared. She was nowhere around, she wasn’t walking up the path, she was just gone. Now completely spooked we ran back into the car where Ritchie was lazily lighting a cigarette in the back seat.

Jean Marc screamed at him to put it out and a startled Ritchie dropped it on the floor.

“Find it! Find it! We’re gonna burst into flames!”  he yelled as he held his legs up to his ears. Poor Ritchie dove to the floor asking what was going on. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t talk. My phone was ringing. Somewhere a dog was barking. It was chaos.

Eventually we calmed down and explained to Ritchie what happened and headed home. No one smoked. We all sat there in silence thinking about that old lady and how she vanished after handing us a bottle of kerosene to wash our feet.