I have two poppers stories.
I came out when I was 17. I had a friend who was a few years older. Back then, we called them “fag hags” - she fit the stereotype - a little chubby, only gay friends who thought she was fabulous, not attractive to straight men at all (let’s just say, she was a bit much). She was my date to our homecoming dance in my senior year. She wanted black flowers. We had been going to gay discos for a few months together by then and always did poppers on the dance floor. We decided to sneak poppers into the homecoming dance. But how would we do them without being detected. She had the brilliant idea of putting them on a tissue and hiding it in her flowers, which we did. As soon as we walked into the cafeteria, where the dance was, people started freaking out. “What is that smell?” They were looking all over. She went into the bathroom and flushed the evidence down the toilet. No one ever figured out it was us.
When I moved to SF in the 90s, I was getting acupuncture at a clinic near my apartment. One night I went to a sex club. I had poppers in my cargo shorts pocket. I woke up late for my acupuncture appointment the next day, threw on my shorts and walked very quickly to my acupuncture appointment. By the time I got there, the cap had come off of the poppers and my shorts were soaked. I couldn’t go back and change.
As I sat in the waiting room, the receptionist reacted first. “What is that smell?” They couldn’t figure out where it was coming from and fortunately, I was not a suspect. Then when I went into the treatment room and the smell followed, no one made the connection. The window was open and there was construction outside, so they blamed that and closed the windows. I couldn’t not get out of there fast enough.
I have stopped buying them, but if someone offers them to me I usually don’t say no.