July 2001

You Stink
These are my Thoughts

I have become keenly aware of my sense of smell within the last year or so, to the extent that I wear nothing of a strong scent. My unscented soap leaves a trace of smell and so does my light-scented hair product of choice, but otherwise nothing else to sully that beautiful odor that builds up as the day progresses.

Now I ride public transportation and it is a fine thing. It gets me where I need to go in a timely manner and the train engineers are usually friendly and not too chatty over the intercom. But mornings are a dangerous time for those of us who are aware of our noses- many people, in fact, are not aware of your sense of smell unless, say, a skunk's bladder is splattered on the side of the road on which you happen to be driving. Some of you reading this are not aquatinted with your smeller.

But this skunk smell is nothing! Nothing! It is natural and it is good. What is offensive is the meat-head-in-a-suit on his morning commute to some god-forsaken office, who is interested in his boss' secretary and wants to smell all good and stuff cause that's what the magazines that reek of CK1, and whatever other rotten fashion scent, lead him to believe- he will be led to believe almost anything.

It is many a morning that my personal space is intruded upon in such a manner that harassment suit-seeking lawyers would rub their eyes in disbelief if they had an inkling of what transpired. It is many a morning that I am convinced that my ability to taste is permanently damaged and that I will never again enjoy the subtitles of a malty brew.

It is criminal and I beg all you- be thoughtful of those of us with the ability to smell small things so that we won't suffer something so severe as to be even psychological. Steer cleat of those terrifying, 100 decibel, glossy-magazine stenches- lest someone burn you with a blowtorch just to make sure you feel something. What comes around does, somewhere at some point, go around.