Ah, the joys of typewriter maintenance. Picture me, just your average Joe, undertaking the noble task of maintaining my precious Hermes 3000 in pristine glory.

Armed with cotton swabs and a spray bottle of 99 percent isopropyl alcohol, I was all set to dive into the fiddly, smudgy, inky world of typeslug cleanliness.

What I wasn’t ready for was the time travel that occurred after the first spray.

The moment that acerbic scent of isopropyl alcohol hit my nostrils, my brain went on an impromptu trip down memory lane.

Picture this: One moment, I was elbow-deep in the guts of a vintage typewriter, and the next, I was back in the sultry, steamy setting of Denver’s Empire Baths.

I’d somehow managed to astrally project myself into the midst of a memory of my first visit to the former gay bathhouse.

Why, you might ask, did my brain make this leap from cleaning typeslugs to steamy encounters?

Here’s the explanation.

Poppers are recreational inhalants of isobutyl nitrite or related compounds made by reacting isobutyl alcohol with sodium nitrite in dilute sulfuric acid.

These aren’t exactly household chemicals, but their distinctive scent is oddly reminiscent of alcohol.

At the Empire Baths — or any other gay bathhouse — the aroma of poppers infused the humid air, subtly overlaying the scent of damp towels and sweat. Quite the unique olfactory cocktail.

It’s not a far stretch to say that my nostrils picked up the thread of familiarity between the isopropyl alcohol and those ethereal nitrite wafts from the past.

And voila!

My brain leaped from typeslugs to steam rooms faster than a pussy pouncing on a laser pointer.

But I must cut this blog post short before we digress further into memory and nostalgia.

There’s an irresistible siren call from my living room I cannot ignore: a new Chris Pratt movie on Amazon Prime.