No Scents, the sign said.
It was on the office door of a math professor I once took a class from.
Woman. Put herself through college all the way to a Ph.D. as a single mother. She smoked.
Couldn't stand perfume though, or cologne, nor any kind of poofery or puffery or fluffery that came in a bottle or as freight in a bar of bubble soap.
I myself at times have gagged mightily when confined narrowly, near one recently exited from drenching of ten-cent-a-gallon stink juice.
The anti-aroma brigade gains more members daily, way up north where I used to live. I can understand them. I can understand that.
Here, no — don't think so. Not in Ecuador. Maybe not in any of what we-all call Latin America.
Here, if you're alive, you need to smell good.
To smell good you need to smell like you popped out of a flower-adorned bottle.
You get that way by
- bathing with bar soap
- applying hand lotion
- shampooing
- greasing up with sunscreen
- doing laundry, and wearing the results
- doing anything else
You can't help it. Everything stinks, everywhere, all the time.
Products aren't allowed on the market unless they can be used as chemical scent weapons, capable of emitting shock waves of sweet reeks to flatten small buildings and overturn rolling traffic.
The Bad News: The smells that linger for a week. No matter how often you wash.
The Good News: I'm waiting. Make it happen. Please.
But it's all relative then, innit? As in how close to borderline nausea you begin that day, just being alive. And how fast you can reasonably run, discreetly.
But they're always there, the floral stinks. Always.
Always seeking, ready to infiltrate your head, and to destroy your sanity. Mine, anyway.
Maybe it's my nostrils.