Scents & Sensibility
By BetsyG
My piece, Mate For Life, seemed to resonate with people for a variety of reasons, one of which was that they identified with the bit about scent. Apparently, I’m not the first person to have consciously observed the role it plays in romance.
We’re coached from a young age to believe that appearance is the main factor in finding a person physically attractive. But there are five physical senses, and, in my experience, they all contribute—if not equally—to a person’s appeal, or lack thereof.
Example: My sister wanted to set me up with a guy who had a few things going for him: he was several years younger than me (which I prefer), was extremely good looking, and seemed to be a nice guy (oh, that). But when he phoned me, I took an immediate dislike to his voice. He sounded like a nebbish, like someone who was wearing a Mr. Rogers sweater. Still, I was pretty hard up, er, I mean, my sister had said he was nice, so I agreed to meet him.
In person, I found that what my sister had said was true: he was quite good-looking—good-looking enough that I ignored any nebbish-like qualities and other negatives, such as the fact that I didn’t want to date someone religiously observant, and he showed up wearing a yarmulke.
We began dating, and I soon discovered that he didn’t taste good. (Get that mind out of the gutter…I captured that information from kissing.) And as I got to know him better (okay, you can put your mind in the gutter again), I found I didn’t care for his scent, either. In fact, while he did appeal to my senses of sight and touch, there was precious little I liked about him beyond that.
Those two factors can be pretty powerful forces, as it turns out. We dated for a while, but when we broke up, I never looked back.
Example: Dale might not have been the best match for me in terms of shared life experiences and common interests, but he sure smelled good. Despite the fact that he smoked, he didn’t stink of stale cigarettes, nor did his breath. How odd that he would smell and taste delicious when I abhor cigarette odor! (How odd, too, that I smoked for 15 years, but that’s another story.) On top of that, he had the best voice—deep and gravelly, with a wheezy and endearing laugh that made him sound like a kid who’d just been caught doing something naughty.
When I broke up with him, I regretted it almost immediately. The relationship had its problems, but among other things—he was certainly the most endearing man I’ve dated, evidenced by the fact that we are still friends—I would miss that voice. I listened to the last message he left on my voicemail every day until it expired. (Damn you, Cingular!)
Example: After Gary broke up with me, people couldn’t understand why I was devastated for such a long time. Sure, he was everything I ever wanted in a man. But to some, the three-year mourning period seemed out of proportion with the seven months we had dated.
Consider how he affected my senses, though. Tall and handsome, he looked like an Eddie Bauer model—graying but rugged. He smelled….mmmm. Science and pheromones aside, I have a very powerful sense of smell, and Gary smelled better than any man I’d been with except for Party-Hardy Marty. (After we broke up, I couldn’t walk by Gary’s brand of soap in the supermarket without experiencing a pang.) Gary and I both noticed that, even after an onion- or garlic-heavy meal, we never had an issue with each other’s breath. Chemically speaking, we belonged together.
Touch? It’s hard not to find a spot on any person that feels good, whether it’s hair or a smooth patch of skin that begs to be stroked (get that mind out of the gutter again). And being touched is bound to feel good, though I did see one person for which that was not the case. (A word you don’t want to utter during intimacy: “Ow!”)
As for the fifth sense, Gary had a strange compendium of accents that gave his voice an unusual lilt, and a unique vocal quality that made it otherworldly smooth. I was completely undone by it, and sighed contentedly listening to him on the phone each night. For seven months, his voice was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.
Why did I mourn so when I lost him? I missed him, in every sense.
