What Smells Good to You?

Firstly, here’s a piece of good news about Hawken the Irish Wolfhound: I have been training him with a very long retractable leash, and he almost never strays from heel. If he does, I call him and he comes right over to me.

Hawken the Irish Wolfhound gives me a knowing glance through the back yard fence recently. He's one of the smartest, gentlest dogs I have ever known.
Hawken the Irish Wolfhound gives me a knowing glance through the back yard fence recently. He’s one of the smartest, gentlest dogs I have ever known.

On the other hand, recently when I was about to walk him, he spotted a rabbit in the back yard, and I have never seen him move so fast. The rabbit got away through a hole in the fence, but the pursuit was amazing.

I grow marigolds in my vegetable garden. People will tell you they attract beneficial insects, but I think they are just fun to grow, and smell like paradise. I often pick some and bring them to Abby.
I grow marigolds in my vegetable garden. People will tell you they attract beneficial insects, but I think they are just fun to grow, and smell like paradise. I often pick some and bring them to Abby.

Anyway.

At first I thought about making this a “top five favorite smells,” clickbait, but as I gave it more thought, I pondered the notion that odor and pleasure come together in different ways for different people. I knew some one once who always introduced sharp flavors, like chocolate or mustard, into sex. I found that I don’t like non-human smells in the middle of sex.

Handling tomato vines deposits a potent, wonderful smell on my fingers. It's one reason I really love growing them.
Handling tomato vines deposits a potent, wonderful smell on my fingers. It’s one reason I really love growing them.

I thought of all this as I was working outside the last few days, where some of the smells were overpowering my pleasure center…

  • The grass I just mowed, the marigolds I moved slightly aside to pull up grass, the green from my tomato vines on my finger tips.
  • The air at first light in the mountains in the winter with snow on the ground, like getting up early on a ski trip.
  • Aviation gasoline; the decades of spilling small amounts make the cockpits of small planes smell the same, and that smell instantly brings me back to my days in the sky.
  • The faint, subtle smell of fireplace smoke from the days around the first freeze.
  • New cameras – the plastic and Styrofoam and brass and glass. It’s not that the smell itself brings please, so much as it smells like potential.
  • Iris, honeysuckle, roses, wildflowers
  • In a coffee house last week, they were grinding some blends, and those bold, fresh ground or fresh brewed flavors of coffee set off some very powerful endorphins in my brain.
  • My wife Abby’s hair, and her smell in general; since our first days together in 2003 to this very day, she smells like home. I asked her to list some of her favorite smells, and she said, “My husband, my dogs, vanilla, cherry pie.”
I think it's a little unfair that the woman I love smells so good. Because of it, I will do anything she wants. What she wants most is my love.
I think it’s a little unfair that the woman I love smells so good. Because of it, I will do anything she wants. What she wants most is my love.

2 Comments

  1. I like coffee, movie theater popcorn, vanilla, chocolate, barbecue, good soap, a new book, fresh-cut grass, gasoline (that’s not weird, is it?), and the outdoors, in general. Also, cedar. Not so much: napalm in the morning.

  2. Libraries. Dauphine’s neck. Tracey’s everything. Everything edible I’m growing. Public schools. Boiled seafood. Skunk. Gymnasia. Vinyl records. Hawaiian tropic SPF 80.

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