The Nose Knows

My freshman year of college there was this senior who lurked around my dorm room a lot.  He was cute, all five feet of him.  His sandy blond hair fell across his eyes like a curtain tucked halfway up a window.  For some unknown reason, he liked me.  OK, maybe it was known.  Might have had something to do with my cute smile.  Or my charming naivete.  Or the kiss we shared over by the bathrooms during that frat party... one for the record books.  The party was being held at a beach and the sounds and smells of that night are etched in my memory... the water lapping onto the shore... the aroma of dried seaweed... the crunch of the sand and broken shells under our feet... and his smell, a combination of sweat and Drakkar Noir.  I remember him pressing his face into my neck while my eyes practically rolled back in my head from the intoxicating scent.  At that moment I would have done anything he wanted, I was so completely aroused.  Foot traffic to the loo, however, kept our embrace short and sweet.

In the years since, there has occasionally been another melange of scents equally as seductive.  I'm a fool for a man who smells great.  Little Known Way Into January's Pants # 14: Smell Good.  Hell, we are animals, after all.  Isn't that the whole evolutionary idea behind pheromones?  Man smells good.  Woman opens legs.  Human race continues.

But sometimes I've caught wind of a guy's fragrance and been immediately turned off.  What is this smell that has such a potent anti-aphrodisiacal affect?  I call it Eau de Frère, or My Brother's Scent.  It's something like a combination of dirty socks, methane and sweat.  Nothing will bring me out of a blush-inducing haze faster than smelling my brother or any man resembling his odor.  I could be as horny as a hooker at a Chippendales show yet I'd turn down Nathan Fillion if he smelled like my brother.

I might offer to shower with Nathan first.  You know, just to see if I could wash off the scent.  If he asked nicely.

I believe the point in all this evolutionary hoo-ha is to diversify my gene pool.  I really don't care, so long as I get a great-smelling man.  Great smelling and intelligent.  Great smelling, intelligent, and witty.  Plus kind of outgoing but not more than me.  Also preferably taller than that senior at the frat party.  Not too much to ask, right?

But seriously on the olfactory arousal.