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mothersmell
Thursday, March 8 2001
So now Gretchen and I are a couple. We're not monogamous, she's not heterosexual, we live on opposite coasts, she might be getting a job up in the Adirondacks, but all of that is sort of beside the point because we've got this newly-rediscovered obsession with one another. What I mean is that she really does preoccupy a large portion of my thoughts on any particular day and the rest of the world is reduced in significance, yet again, to that of a bunch of chortling squirrels.
I was searching in my mind tonight for what it is I like about the way Gretchen smells naturally. It's a subtle thing and I can't put my finger on it except to say it's a low-key, healthy and thoroughly unique smell. In fact, even the texture of her skin is unique. Both are things I remember from over twelve years ago.
Smells are really important to me; one of the things that always troubled me about Bathtubgirl in the back of my mind was that her natural smell was just a little bit too much like my mother's. In an absolute sense this isn't a bad thing, mind you. To men whose mothers don't smell this way I'm sure her fragrance is a wonderful thing. But I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that there exists a biologically-programmed sexual revulsion to the smell of one's mother. This would have been especially important back in cave man times, when the only records we kept were olfactory ones.
I've read that ovulating fertile women are most attracted to men who smell least like themselves, the supposed biological reason being that these men are least likely to be their brothers, fathers or other close relatives. By being attracted to men outside the family unit, genes continue to flow in from outside and inbreeding happens less often. Interestingly, this preference reverses when a woman is pregnant (or on birth control pills), supposedly because an attraction to strangers isn't as wise when one is carrying a child in which strangers have no biological stake.
For her part, Gretchen seems to appreciate my smell as much as I appreciate hers. She says she remembers it fondly from back when I was her first lover. Indeed, during the twelve years when she was off exploring the sexuality of others, she was often disappointed to find that things she'd enjoyed smelling on me did not appeal to her at all on other people.
Today Gretchen and I have been doing a lot of communication via AOL Instant Messenger. It's free, it's fast, and it's expressive even without the emoticons (we both hate those little fuckers) because English itself is expressive. Still, at a certain point I just wanted her face, you know?
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