The Venerable Nose

Despite being in my early 20's, I am continulous facinated by the human olefactoy system. As an art major I can laude the sence of touch and sight. As an amature epicurian I take perhaps too much delight in taste. However, too often I forget about the nose.

Today I picked up a shirt to wash from my hamper. It still smells like the person I was hanging out with at the time I was wearing it.

My car has a slight reputation for being a stinky place. The lady I bought it from was a chain smoker. Even when I was a smoker I never smoked in my car. I've definitely added my own smells to the thing though, but I can still make out the scent of the previous occupant through the plethora of scents. When I give a ride to someone in my car, I can still smell them in there for the next day. When I'm intimate with someone, I can smell them coming from a block away, and often I can't smell myself over their scent when we're apart.

When I lived with roommates and I wanted to know if they were home, all I had to do was crack open the front door and take a whiff. From just a whiff I knew who was home, which room they were in, and where in the house they had been.

I have a good friend that I regularly exchange books with. Everytime I get a book back it always smells like her, for a least a few months. This isn't to say these people reek or are putrid. It's not an offensive smell people give off (well, some do) they just have a scent.

A good friend of mine once had a 24 hour fling with a guy from Canada. Even though they haven't seen each other for over a two years, they still send each other's dirty laundry to each other so they can just "smell it." Ok, yeah this is a little extreme, sending your soiled draws through international mail for someone to smell. I don't know what else to write about today, so I'm soliciting stories about people and their smells.