“I like your smell,” said Ogre. For most people such a comment would make them feel warm and fuzzy but for me it said something very different. If there was concern for accuracy Ogre would have said, “I like the smell of the essential oil cologne we picked up from the Indian guy at the New Life Expo and am glad I can smell it on you.” But this was a relationship masked in insecurities and power plays and accuracy was the last thing of concern.
Smell is our most primitive sense, not meaning it is the least technological of our ways to process the environment but that it was our first sense to develop. While most people function predominantly through their sense of sight, just remembering the smell of the brownies that your mom used to bake when you were a kid is enough to send just about everyone into a state of heavenly glory. It sends me into a coughing fit but that’s because my mother burnt just about everything that went into her oven and by “oven” I actually mean oven and not her vagina.
We tie different associations to different smells. The smell of buttery popcorn to the movie theater; smelling stale beer and puke to waking up in the alley by the bar last Saturday night; the smell of flowers to a field of blossoms. Even if it is just in our mind, smells can transport us to places and times of which not even Star Trek’s teleportation technology was capable.
My friend Dave hates the smell of patchouli. I think he was once with a girl who was wearing it who chewed up his face during a make-out session and thereafter he could never smell the scent without shouting at the top of his lungs, “FOR GOD’S SAKE, WOMAN, STOP USING YOUR TEETH!” This once caused an unnecessary argument between he and his wife when she was giving him a blowjob and the scent of a woman who must have bathed in a tubful of patchouli walked by on the street below and the smell of that bushy herb from the genus pogostemon wafted up and entered his apartment window.
I suppose it is natural for people to associate smells with people. I remember my first martial arts school and how the teacher always smelled like musk from his underarm deodorant. Years later I was training in tai chi chuan and my instructor smelled the same musky way and I was instantly brought back to those early days of training.
But I am a guy who prefers things a little more “natural” in the sense of “close to nature” and less so to mean “common.” I don’t like a woman wearing tons of make-up, unless we’re role-playing and she happens to be playing the part of a whore or a clown or a whorey clown. And I prefer a woman not to wear any perfume, as I like to imbibe the smell of her—her skin, her sweat, her pheromones—and not any store-bought cover-up. If I go down on a girl I want it to smell and taste like pussy and not some peppermint castile soap that she douched with because she is insecure about her smell. Now don’t get me wrong, if I had to choose between the smell/taste of peppermint or rotting tuna it would be a hands down decision for the former; by “natural” I also don’t mean “rotten.”
With more distance and more reflection it is clear to me that there is little about me that Ogre really did like, especially regarding the physical. She liked my body, that much I will concede. I suppose she liked my cock, that is if it was stimulating her and saving her electric bill from using her vibrator each night. But she didn’t like my dress—and not just the red one with the bow on the lapel—buying me clothes that she would rather see me in, never asking me what I actually liked; she didn’t like my hair, suggesting I cut it; she didn’t like my smell, suggesting I cover it; nor did she like my sarcasm, suggesting I shut it the fuck up.
Today it was raining pretty heavily when I took Abandon out for a couple of walks. She came back soaked and smelling like wet dog. Now for those of you who don’t interact with dogs, the smell of wet dog is like a cross between the elephant house at the Bronx Zoo and a horse’s ass. As I dried her with one of my towels, I wasn’t concerned that she would get her funk into it. I just smiled at her looking vulnerable, all wet with her tail hanging between her legs, gave her a kiss on the snout and took a deep inhale to smell her scent. At that moment I realized why dogs smell each other’s privates. They don’t have the human quality of judgment and desire only to smell the essence beyond the Frontline flea and tick collar and shampoos of the ass in front of them.
But more importantly, I actually like Abandon’s smell. She smells like a dog and that is what she is. But more importantly, she smells like her and that is who I love. I am not saying one has to eat their mother’s burnt cooking because, “That is how she cooks.” I am just saying that if one is going to eat his mother’s burnt pussy, he should accept it for what it is and not expect it to be a French soufflé. Did I say, “eat his mother’s burnt pussy”? Now that’s just unnatural!
I look forward to meeting someone who desires to smell the me beyond the body suit and not to cover it up with more barriers.
