Making scents of it all

It's a teensy bit dorky to title an entry with a pun, but it makes me feel witty, and I'm the boss around here.

I don't wear perfumes very often. I love scents, and I remember and respond to aromas as much as the next human being, but I guess I just haven't found a perfume that smells the way I want to smell all the time.

Right now my apartment smells like coconut curry. We had Indian food for dinner. It is a lovely smell when it comes steaming out of a kitchen, but it is not lovely when it clings to clothes and people. One time in high school I gave my friend a hug and she smelled like curry. I remember thinking it was gross.

I had a boyfriend once who always smelled like the hand soap that BYU used in all of its dispensers. BYU's soap wasn't bad smelling, it was just generically soapy. I'm glad he was so meticulous about washing his hands, but he must have really piled that soap on because he always, always smelled like that. Looking back, I think there was something kind of unsexy about that smell. Maybe that's why BYU used it.

You know what smells kind of good? Sweaty babies. Not sweaty kids, they stink almost as bad as sweaty adults. But babies, when they're still little milk monsters who wear over-warm jammies with feet attached, mmm-mmm. Go find one who just woke up from a hot afternoon nap. Find one whose mom bathes him pretty often but who doesn't lather him up with scented lotions and powders. Just bury your nose into his armpit and breathe in deep.

I know someone who naturally smells like unbuttered, unsalted popcorn, but not too strongly. That's a pretty good way to smell, day in and day out. But if I smelled that in a perfume bottle, I think it would turn my stomach. Actually, if I found a perfume called "popcorn" I don't think I'd open it.