Smells

I was lying in bed the other night, watching TV. Sam had just come home from playing volleyball and was rinsing off in the shower. All of a sudden, I smelled something very strong and very odd; something I knew, but couldn't bring to mind immediately. It was a pungent, "thick," herbal-woodsy kind of scent. It seemed to be floating in the window from the street below. Where else would it be coming from?
Sam was just drying off.
"Honey," I whispered loudly, "Something awful is outside the window. What is it?"
He strode triumphant out of the shower over to the window and peered through the slats of the blinds. "I don't see anything."

That is when I realized that in fact, the odor had followed him from the bathroom.
"Honey, are you wearing a new kind of cologne?"
He was.
He smiled at me proudly, with a heady smell emanating from his person.

"Oh Honey," I crinkled up my nose. "You smell like a pipe."

Sam turned to me, an expression of dismay across his face. "How can you mean that?...this was really expensive. Are you telling me that I smell like tobacco?"
I nodded.
"Now I feel really terrible." He eyed the bottle on the counter. "I'll take it back tomorrow."
"Stores don't take returned fragrances, Sweetie. You'll just have to decide what to do with it, but it's yours for keeps now."

I felt awful, but I also remembered hearing something similar from him six years earlier when the shoe was on the other foot.

I have always loved wearing White Linen. It is a light floral scent that doesn't offer a full on olfactory assault as do other musky or rancid fruit decoctions. I was wearing it when I met Sam for the first time; I wore it the first time we kissed; when he proposed; when we got married. I loved it. But soon after we got married my bottle of White Linen was empty and we headed to the mall for a replacement. At least, that's what I was looking for.

Sam was looking for an alternative. As I was browsing around the perfume counter waiting for the clerk to bring me my White Linen, Sam proffered one fragrance after another. Generally, he has very good taste in fragrances, so I was eager to see what he chose. Most of them though, were icky musky type of smells and I grew tired of his selections rather quickly. When the clerk came with my boxed fragrance, Sam turned to me.
"Honey," his voice dropped and took on a tone of entreaty. "I really wish you wouldn't buy that." He eyed my White Linen sadly.
"Why?" It wasn't that expensive. I looked at Sam's face.
He looked a bit uneasy and seemed to be trying to choose his words carefully. "It's just that...I don't really think it's a good fragrance...for you."
"What?" This was the first I was hearing this sad news.
He smiled warmly at me and pulled me up next to him. "You smell like an old lady in that."
"What!?" All this time I thought it made me more alluring and he was just tolerating it. Go figure. He must love me a lot to have never said anything about it.
"I just didn't know how to tell you, but I don't like it."

I left that store with a fragrance called Light Blue: a faint floral fragrance with a touch of citrus. I liked it and I have worn it ever since. But I nostalgically sniff White Linen every time I see it on fragrance counters.

Now I have a husband whose scent smells like a smoking pipe. My first thought was, Lower the guns, the fight is on! But I've always had a hard time being mean to Sam. Maybe it's his big brown eyes, or his desire for my approval, but I restrained my inner musings about sleeping next to someone whose fragrance makes my eyes run.
"It's okay, Honey," I told him the next morning. "Maybe you can just put on less of it. I think it might actually be nice in a haunting kind of way--reminds me of a man smoking a pipe by a cozy fireplace, if it is fainter."
"Great," he muttered. "Now you're telling me that I smell like an old man."
"Not really, I countered. "It's not my choice, but it isn't bad if you're not soaked with it."
He agreed.

Sam actually smells pretty nice now, or maybe I'm just getting used to it. It is small peanuts, this fragrance business, as long as my eyes don't water from the acrid smell of it when it's full strength. I imagine Sam is happy to have a new scent that he likes. Perhaps he will so enjoy it that he won't notice the new White Linen bottle in my medicine cabinet.