I Stink.

Inspired by a line from my latest read, I recall an unfortunate high school encounter and lay out for you the long history of my pungent leanings.

“There is a power to her filth.” - Samantha Hunt, The Dark Dark 

I stink. Not just in the summer, not just in the heat, not just when the blues have caused me to go unshowered for too many days and not just when I’m fresh off a run. That last one was a bit of a stretch, if not a full-blown lie, but I’m a writer and writers get to be liars as long as we tell (or type) our fibs while also wearing a pretentious wool turtleneck, of which I am. So there. The point is, I smell. All the time. 

When I was in high school, this plagued me. High on my list of teenage insecurities, nestled between concerns about my height, my breasts and bangs and the gap between my two front teeth, was the issue of my B.O., my breath, my general stench. I tried every harsh Chanel perfume sample at the Nordstrom counter, ripped out the pages of every acrid Victoria's Secret body mist from the battered Teen Vogue’s that littered my bedroom floor, doused myself in all my mothers fancy essential oils, the bulk of which could purify a four bedroom house but didn’t stand a chance against my natural odors. Nothing worked. 

Freshman year, post-lunch P.E period, sitting in the shade with a handful of boys from my grade. We’d just finished our mandatory bi-weekly mile run, and I, having dragged my weary body across the finish line, was putting a lot of effort into acting like I wasn’t in excruciating physical discomfort. You know when you’re so winded and sore that you genuinely fear you may be dying, but you’re on a public subway platform or at your airport gate or somewhere else where there are too many witnesses for you to pant and moan and groan the way you so badly need to, so instead you just grimace and hold your breath? Smile through it and hope no one around you notices that you are on death's door, wheezing and sweating through your backpack straps? That’s where I was at, only I wasn’t at the top of a steep set of subway stairs or racing to catch my plane or having tea with the Reaper. I was in a much more menacing environment, surrounded by fourteen-year-old boys. One of whom I was totally, completely, delusionally in love with. 

This prince in question, who will remain anonymous for both our sakes, would of course be the one to deliver a casual comment that, up until very recently, continued to rattle around the inside of my vast empty skull at least once a month, or any time I was already feeling like shit and wanted to rub some salt in my many wounds. Nostalgia is the enemy of self-esteem. 

We’re on the grass. I’m panting, trying to act natural and lean my body towards his body in a way that says “hey, I exist, please tell me that I exist,” when he leans over, theatrically sniffs the air around me, then announces to the group “someone here really smells!” And you can be sure that he emphasized “someone” with a pointed thumb and nod of the head in my direction, his blonde highlights (never once have I claimed to have good taste in crushes) fall into his eyes as my life and already dwindling dignity flash before mine. 

Everyone laughed, save one sweetheart who glanced over at me guiltily, then went back to fiddling with his shoe laces. If there was any justice in the world, Shoe Laces and I would have been wedded in a tasteful Connecticut ceremony by now, having given misty-eyed toasts about our awkward teenage years and how lucky we are to have stumbled back into each other's lives so many years later. But I don’t remember his last name and I’m pretty sure he moved to Australia a few months after this incident. Oh, what could have been.  

So Frosted Tips gets some laughs, and I spend the next decade fully convinced that the source of all my suffering is the eye-watering funk that emits from my pores, exacerbated by strenuous movement but certainly not limited to it. 

When I got to college, the issue continued. By then I had gotten better at masking it, distracting people with a song and dance and a handful of self-deprecating jokes. I was always afraid though, and when I engaged in intimate acts with boys I’d met in a Sociology class or at a party, the terror of being “found out,” of someone getting close enough to taste and judge my various scents and smells, paralyzed me to the point of total dissociation. My entire sexual history was one out-of-body experience after another, and not in a transcendent, euphoric, twirling in your room to a Maggie Rogers record kind of way. This, it, I, was all wrong. 

Now I’m twenty-three, flirting with twenty-four, nearly four years celibate and entirely resigned to the fact that I am a stinky, smelly woman. I grow hair from everywhere, sometimes I remember deodorant, although most give me such a bad rash that I prefer to forgo it altogether. I smear some Amber oil on my neck and wrists when I’m heading out or hitting the town (another stretch), but for the most part I don’t even think about it anymore. Bowing out of sex and dating helped. I felt so much pressure to perform, to be shiny and glittering and without flaws, or so funny and sharp and present and clever that I inspired my partner to graciously overlook my “issues.”

 ** Please hold while I scroll through my playlist. I have a sudden craving for three to fifteen loops of Swift’s “Mirrorball,” followed by a generous serving of “Tolerate It.” **

Don’t misunderstand me, I have in no way cracked the code on healing high school wounds or championing lifelong insecurities. It’s very possible that some new, equally toxic body-based fixation has simply swooped in and nudged out the old one. To quote Toni Morrison in an entirely inappropriate context, “there will always be one more thing.”  I don’t know when exactly it changed, when I stopped being so antagonistic of my body’s natural scents and smells, and maybe I just found new things to worry and obsess over. But the other day my mom hugged me, pulled away then doubled back for a sniff, raised my arm above my head and nuzzled into my pit the way only a mother would do, and said “woof! You’re ripe!” And I laughed, and I sniffed, and she was right. I was ripe. And it didn’t bother me one bit. No twinge of shame or jolt of anxiety wormed up my spine.

I stink. And? 

Best,

Dronme 

*Also, should I ever have a run-in with a Yellow Spotted Lizard, I will have the victorious last laugh.*