I have often said that if I was to lose any sense, losing my sense of smell would be the most devastating for me. I’m big on smell. Sometimes, I find myself in Super Smell Mode. My sense of smell is pretty good anyway, but with Super Smell it is enhanced. I can smell the tiniest ingredients in food. I can smell when people have been having sex. I can smell a million other things but identifying them is difficult. The first guy I fell in love with had a mother with no sense of smell. She did a lot of laundry, with which she used enormous amounts of fabric conditioner and strongly-scented washing powder. My first boyfriend, therefore, smelled of fabric conditioner, but I grew to love it. When it ended, I was torn up, but tried to move on. I was hindered in my attempt by people who brushed past me who used the same brand which would literally stop me in my tracks.
The scents I used to use transport me back to my teens. The smell of Impulse O2, and Lynx Africa, popular with teenage boys in the nineties, with its sandalwoody pheromones which used to have me on my knees indiscriminate as to who was wearing it. Occasionally, I wear a strong cinnamony vanilla scent. One of our regulars always compliments me when I wear it at work– yet I’m sure others are bowled over with dislike for the same smell – it is so subjective.
My best friend had the most wonderful natural smell -like sandalwood and sweat and soap – and I never tired of being with him. I was so comfortable in his company and smell that I became certain (although I was spectacularly mistaken) that we were destined to be together. Another man smelled like no one I’ve ever met. He used no scent and he was a bit of a soap dodger, truth be told. I don’t see him any more, but when I have run into him I am always surprised by how much I like the way he smells, even though I know how dirty he is.
Wearing carefully picked perfume is lovely, but I think actually daring to smell like yourself is the most attractive, like my friend who doesn’t use anti-antiperspirants. She smells beautiful – of essential oils, sweat, well loved clothes, of herself. It is said that humans pick mates on the way they smell, but we can’t always be right. My first boyfriend might smell good, but he was an arsehole.
