Dear Diary,
I’ll give an uncharacteristic warning, pre-monologue, that if there’s an entry you feel like skipping, it’s probably this one…
I’ve been reflecting on how paramount my sense of smell is towards developing relationships of pretty much every capacity. A lot of my opinion on someone comes from how quickly they react or respond to situations. A lot of it comes from how they empathize with other living, breathing creatures with which they share this planet. And a lot of it comes from how they smell.
I don’t perspire like most folks. Some friends have commented that I don’t have a scent. Other, more intimate acquaintances, have made the observation that I only produce an odor when my blood sugar is low. Or high, I dunno, I can’t smell myself. Any time someone compliments the way I smell, it’s usually my shampoo or the fabric softener I use or my incense.
Despite that, a lot of how I feel about someone comes from their smell. For years, COVID wiped out my olfactory senses and I was despondent and kinda suicidal over it. It sucked. It slowly came back, first with bananas, then with spicy stuff. I went to Denver for a comic convention, last year, and I dunno if it was the altitude or clear air, but my olfactory senses came back just in time to get a whiff of thousands of compact Midwesterners dressed to the nines in cosplay outfits. I dunno how hygenic comic con nerds are in their personal lives, either.
I can find something visually enticing but get turned off by the odor. One of the reasons I’ve had a difficult time in the past with male relationships is the way they smell. Waking up next to someone and your bed has absorbed their love-stench and you just want them to go home and shower cuz the effluvium is overwhelming. It’s not exclusive to the men I’ve been with. This French girl I dated in college, wow, she bathed in this Mary-Kate & Ashley perfume you could detect from across a cavernous room the moment she entered. I was in to that, but whenever I’d lift up her skirt and pull down her panties, her natural flavor overwhelmed the Olsen Twins and I often wondered how much I wanted to snack on that. The relationship did not last long.
Still, I often reminisce about the way Queen Rashishi smelled. Chain smoking, deodorant denying, balmy weather loving Rashishi. We’d walk to school together in the humid Pittsburgh summer and I’d practically shoving my face in her armpits by the time we got to class. I LOVED the way she stank. Absolute instant turn on. But Rashishi reeked rancid and sweet, whereas Nico’s crotch… smelled like a boy. Lol.
I’m pretty sensitive to smell now. I love getting a whiff of my buddies. Like a dog, sometimes, going around trying to smell a stranger’s asshole to see if I’m gonna like them.
My first real girlfriend smelled like Vanilla. That was the aroma she chose from hand lotions and chapsticks. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back with Ego. The thing that enticed me most was her cupcake aroma.
When I think of my buddies, when I start missing folks, I think the way they smell. The hardest thing about this Wally World job is how overwhelming it is breathing everyone in all day. I do not like the way most of the indigenous population of Missouri smells. Not everyone here, but… I mean, I can’t imagine them producing a Yankee Candle scent based on the bouquet of blue collar, bible belt, Blue Lives Matter bullshit you’d expect to find in a grocery store in Joplin. Just sayin’…
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