June Renew: Day Nine
Scent of a Woman (and Man)
I’m starting to get my sense of smell back. It’s slight, but I’m getting whiffs of things where I once wasn’t. When my friend and I make pizza from scratch, I can smell it cooking. We walked into a leather shop and I could smell the hide. After I wash my hair or scrub in the shower, I feel like I now know what my scent is. Which is a good feeling after nearly three years of a wasted sense I had lived with all my life.
I still don’t know if I have body odor sometimes. I can’t exactly know what I smell like here or there. I’m not sure I really want to know. But we all have our own brand of emissions that are a helpful indicator of where we are in our health journey. It’s not something we always need to talk about, but it’s one of those human conditions that keep us humble in every room of the house.
Let’er Rip
Every Sunday I’m back in Jersey, I go to a little breakfast place with my friend where we get our weekly indulgence of Taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches on hard rolls. It’s a Jersey staple, a veritable sodium bomb, but they’re so delicious. He’s such a Viking, he gets two to my one. Which may be proving to be too much for him, because the last time we went out, he kept letting squeakers slip in the car. With the windows up. We laughed, like we always do when either one of us toot, but then something “amazing” happened.
“I can smell it!” I exclaimed, “I can smell the *ss!” which made us both laugh harder. I didn’t smell a full blown frrt, but it was the essence of it, so to speak.
I relay this not to be gross or to exemplify how comfortable my friend and I are with one another, but body scents seem to be the one thing that still hasn’t come back. Like I could be crop dusted by anyone on the streets of Manhattan and never know. So maybe this little moment of strange intimacy shows how things are returning to normal for me after all, even if it had to happen in the most taboo way possible.
Ur in Trouble
I also bring this up for another two-fold reason. For a while there, in my own home, I wouldn’t always flush the toilet right away after I’d take a number one. Definitely after a number two. But my logic after a wee was because I couldn’t smell anything, plus I’m the only one home all day, plus plus I’m “saving water” or something. But now with the chance that I’ll be having more guests visiting, I’ve got to shift focus away from my gross roots and embrace what my nose is beginning to tell me more and more: that humans and their biological functions can really still stink sometimes.
But there’s also this: the other night at my friend’s house, I realized I didn’t flush after I went pee. I simply forgot. Whether that forgetfulness is based on the comfort I set up in my own home or other nefarious forgetful episodes, I’m not sure. I only noticed when I went back in the bathroom to take a shower. I later told him about this, knowing that if he was the one to catch a little pee in the toilet, he wouldn’t be mad at me. But I did have to warn him that maybe this forgetfulness isn’t just about the lack of scent and to be prepared if that’s the case.
Either way, I’m sorry if this entry was a little too stomach-turning for you. But we’re all human. We all do this thing. We’re sometimes weird and silly about it. And when you love a fellow creature, you love all they create. Whether it’s a beer burp to the face or a fart into a fan, there’s nothing quite like the scent of a special brand if you’re lucky enough to find it.