The Scent of Cluelessness

Last time the boyfriend returned from a trip abroad, he brought me a nice, duty-free bottle of Shalimar. He gets huge points for this because it demonstrates that he listened to me rattle on for weeks when I was reading Perfumes the Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. The book is brilliant fun, but I had to read it twice. After the first 25 pages, I finally confessed I could not relate or comprehend; I had never inhaled perfume in my life, except for the Opium my mother once bought as a financial protest after her divorce.

So I asserted my scientist self with research. I began to smell perfumes at malls and drugstores and through on-line samples: Light Blue, CK One, Tommy Girl, Chanel No. 5, Jicky, Stetson, Euphoria, Unicorn Spell (yes, really), Timbuktu, Let it Rock, Derby, Azzaro, Mitsuoko, Black, Lime Basil and Mandarin.

And Shalimar. Very pretty Shalimar.

I read the book a second time, and began to understand words like "smoky," "woody," and "powdery": the once foreign vocabulary used to describe what one smells when our nostril detects the shape or vibration of a molecule.

The book is hilarious, almost heartless; sometimes I feel like I'm reading the equivalent of mean research paper reviews for the perfume industry.

Can Can by Paris Hilton. 1 of 5 stars. "Can it, by all means."

cK IN2U His. 1 of 5 stars. "IM IN UR BOTTLE BORIN UR GF."

Valentino. 1 of 5 stars. "Interesting dissonant floral-vanillic accord, marred by what smells like bargain-basement execution."

After read two, I now pay more attention to my nose and the layers of scent I detect. I now ask people, often salesmen at J.Crew and Banana Republic, "What scent are you wearing?"

* * *

Dedicated readers might realize I am now a professor at my own undergraduate institution. I'm on week 4 of Being Mediocre At My Job. I've plowed through three weeks, staying just hours ahead of the students. After defending just two months ago, I'm a little burnt out, a little lonely, but still quite happy to be out of GradShitTownVille and back in a proper city with bike routes and Thai food.

My brain's perception of time is bizarre. Being on campus everyday, I feel like college was yesterday, but graduate school was 100 years ago. Walking around campus is a memory trip. I snuck into that dorm once, but now my students live in it. I yelled at that professor once, but now he is my colleague. But above all, smell is what has dusted the grey matter off my forgotten college memories. The smell of a tree near the baseball stadium reminded me that I never could afford to park on campus. The smell of Buckley Center unlocked my feelings of total cluelessness as a naive freshman working at JC Penney to pay the tuition that my Stafford Loan didn't cover.

Buckley Center houses much of the core curriculum on my campus: math, philosophy, foreign language, and English. I spent 90% of my freshman year in that building; my very first class on campus was in that building. Walking back into it three weeks ago to find the print shop, my nostrils were burning and I was suddenly the 1994 version of myself. Scared, but weirdly confident despite having no idea what I am doing.

How might Luca and Tania review the scent of Buckley Center? At first, mold. That's the high note. Then a heart note of dust mites followed by a freshly sawed pressboard dry down. All together create an accord that plays, "I have no clue what I'm doing here."

They promise me it gets better. Until then, I think I will try Chamade.