binary smells

[metaphortunate]

The other day the temp I didn't like came to my desk to ask me a question. But first she stopped, sniffed the air, and asked, "Is that your perfume or someone else's?"

"I don't know," I said. It could have been me, or the person next to me, or the woman who had just walked by. "What does it smell like?"

"Huh? It smells like perfume," she said.

We stared at each other. "Then I don't know," I said.

I understand that lots of perfumes are complex and I personally cannot chirp "It smells like a spiced floriental with an amber drydown" off the top of my head. Nonetheless, perfume strong enough to notice does provide more than one bit of information!

Incidentally, I was wearing Lush's Breath of God. Tautologically, it does in fact smell like perfume, since it is a perfume and it smells like itself. However, if you sniff someone wearing it (and it is not a sillage monster) you are less likely to describe it as "perfumey" and more as "did you have a cantaloupe soaked in barbecue sauce, Vicks Vaporub, and Ivory soap for lunch?" It is deeply weird and I love it.

Comments

[roadrunnertwice]

Ha, it kind of all smells like "perfume" to me, too? I inherited an overly ~~delicate~~ sense of smell from my mom, and most perfumes overwhelm me to the point where I can't make out anything in particular (and give me a headache to boot).

Which is why I enjoy reading peoples' perfume posts on DW! It's mostly poison to me in real life, but I can enjoy it vicariously.

[metaphortunate]

It's kind of cool that you can't smell perfume because your sense of smell is too good?? If you could see through everything, you'd be blind!

[khedron]

There was a puzzle in Myst that Jen was stuck on, because perfect pitch led her astray. She had a hard time getting past past "this is an A, and that's an A, so this must be the match" to hearing other qualities of the sound (buzzing or something) that stood out to others much more strongly.