Probably a running theme

Smells really freak me out. If everything didn’t smell so bad or overwhelming to me, I’d go to perfume school in Paris and be world renowned for my amazing olfactory abilities.

Instead, smells freak me out. I don’t enjoy any perfume or cologne (please please please never buy me a scented gift to be nice!), and just being around them feels like a nasal onslaught. There is a woman who works in my friend’s office, and I can smell her perfume from three cubicles away. This is like a nuclear fall-out zone to me, utterly uninhabitable. Every time I get within sniffing range of her, I wonder, “What would I do if I had a desk within smell reach of her?” Sometimes I speculate on complaining to her boss to have her banned from wearing perfume as a public menace. Sometimes I think about complaining to my imagined boss and moving my imaginary desk. Sometimes I imagine not being so uptight about it.

One time Matthew and I went to my favorite sushi restaurant in Chicago, and a young couple walked in right behind us. I think they must have been on their first date, and the boy was trying so hard not to mess up. He was wearing way too much cheap cologne. It was too much of any cologne, but he was wearing a particularly inexpensive smelling brew. What luck, they were seated right behind me! I went nuts. “Matthew, can you smell that cologne? Matthew, gawd it’s terrible. Matthew, I can’t enjoy sushi while I smell this!” I came up with the genius plan to ask to be moved to the sushi bar. Brilliant. Except there was a stinky fish smell there, but even that was far preferable to stinky smelling date guy.

I dream of putting my proboscis to good use, for the benefit of society, creating unique haute couture scents that improve everyone’s lives. I long to have my nose celebrated as the most acutely aware in the land. There should even be ticker-tape parades in honor of my nose. A small town in France that grows lavender should celebrate my birthday as “Nose Day.” Instead I sneeze. One of the only smells I can stand is my grandmother’s face soap; otherwise, I prefer odiferously neutral.

My keenest instrument though is also my keenest insecurity—my nose. Fighting my nose’s destiny has been a theme of my life. Its unusual shape has often gotten more attention than anything else about me, and I resented that. I staunchly claim that the size and shape of my aquiline nose has nothing to do with the way smells affect me, but what if it does? What if the breadth of my nose is also its breath?

Consider a blunt-nosed dog. The pug is not known for its skills as a scent-tracking animal. Neither is a bulldog. But the long-snouted German shepherd and the bloodhound both have important roles in law enforcement and rescue as smell-chasing experts. So what if my nose is more German shepherd than pug?

Accepting that my nose’s peculiar sensitivity has to do with the bloodhound’s physical propensity for his skill means to admit the biological role my nose plays in my life. I have accepted my nose as an attribute of my face, but I’ve never accepted its role in my lifestyle, smelling things that irritate me. Complaining about smells to others only necessitates careful study of my nose. There may be no scientific evidence to support the idea that nose size has any bearing on smell perception, so I may be off the hook. In the meantime, I’ll probably continue denying that my nose has anything to do with how I smell.