Smells Like Home

What do all those studies say again? Something along the lines of how our sense of smell is the strongest of the five, and can recall memories most immediately and vividly...? I was skeptical of this for the longest time; being a visual learner, I trusted my sense of sight to be more accurate in recalling the past. There's nothing like a good, sharp visual cue to bring something specific back to mind. Besides, smells are generic; doesn't the smell of freshly cut grass remind everyone of summer? And the smell of turkey and cranberries of the holidays (unless you don't celebrate it that way, of course)?

Since I'm going to segue into talking about Greg anyway, I might as well say now that it is because of him that I love the smell of a good cranberry candle. I walked into his house one winter evening pre-2003 and wow, just wow. This is also another reason why I associate cranberry with Christmas (it has nothing to do with the sauce on the turkey).

It wasn't until the other day that I did a double take upon smelling something that made me think twice about this whole smell-brings-back-memories jazz. I turned to my ex-boyfriend-now-friend Greg and asked, "Are you still using the same deodorant as you did five years ago?" He blinked, said something like "Oh, yeah", and then launched into a story about how he tried all these organic deodorants that made him smell like gravy, roses, and shit, respectively (and he still smelled like b.o. too). Only, he found that he didn't quite like smelling like any of those things in addition to his b.o., so it was back to his trusty Right Guard Sport. Because I didn't mean to be creepy, I didn't tell him that I had been smelling that smell for hours by then and whenever I got a particularly big whiff of it, all of the sudden we were nineteen again and it was the summer of 2002 and we were in love.

When I smell Axe, it reminds me of being on vacation with my brother in Asia. It was hot and he would put on loads of that body spray stuff every morning before we set out. Travelling together meant being best friends for over a month, and it also meant getting ready together in the mornings, and that meant seeing, hearing and smelling my brother spray Axe all over himself everyday. He doesn't like the way he smells au naturel and owns lots and lots of cologne. Every now and then I'll smell Armani on someone and say, "Hey, you smell like my brother." It usually catches people off guard, but I say it anyway because it makes them stay a while longer and it's a very familiar, comforting kind of smell.

I don't think I ever said this to J when we were dating, but his smell was like home to me. At that time, there was nothing more comforting, reassuring, and wonderful to me than to smell his scent. Without even thinking about it, I would place my face right up to the side of his neck when we laid in bed at night and I would press my nose against his skin and I would just breathe him right in. He could have been clean or he could have not showered for a week and I would still do it. He smelled faintly of mandarin oranges for a few months and when he felt fancy he'd wear Swiss Army. After we broke up, every time I caught some orange or Swiss Army in the air, it felt like I had just breathed in a dagger through my heart. I'm convinced that his smell - his real smell, the deep smell of his skin - stayed in me even after I stopped breathing him in at nights. I didn't keep any of his clothes, I even showered regularly, and yet, I could smell him everywhere I went.

My brother is self-conscious about the way he smells, and this is a quirk that he and I share. My family used to tease me a lot about my b.o. when I was going through puberty and what Asian kid doesn't remember the first time someone tells them they smell like rice? Or noodles? I doused myself in all sorts of fruity body sprays and Clinique perfumes through high school hoping that my signature scent would be something like dryer sheets. I was fully aware and (self-)conscious of the way I smelled sans chemicals and I couldn't imagine anyone ever liking it.

Until I met Adam, of course. He'd put his face right up to me after I came back from a run and I squirmed for the shower, feeling sweaty and gross. I suppose it was just a different kind of romance. It took me a while to get used to his scent. I slept with my face just a little farther away because I hadn't gotten accustomed to it yet. And then one random day, I unthinkingly put my nose against the skin on the side of his neck and I breathed. I just breathed. I didn't know how deeply I had fallen for him or how deeply it hurt to not be with him anymore until I started to miss smelling him. "That's how you know," I explained to one of my girlfriends, "It's when they start to smell like home. That's how you know."
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