i should really separate the clothes on my floor better. there is the clean pile and the funky pile, but sometimes they get really close to each other and i get mixed up which is which and SOMETIMES the cursory sniff is not as revealing as it should be.

so, right now, i stink. hey corporate world, do you like that?

i can't gauge how far reaching or strong the funk is, but i am guessing if i notice it's fairly strong.

so, i am a little uncomfortable. because i live too far away to change even on lunch, the drive home and back would be too long.

i hang my head, for i am a dirty girl.

not that i even mind my smell. in fact, i quite like it. i mean, not in some freaky deaky fetishistic way (shh!). but it's nice, comforting, you know?

this acceptance of my smell is a new thing; i grew up in a house with a mother, god bless her, who was hyper-sensitive to any kind of smell at all. well, any kind of potentially off smell. for years i have been freaked out and ashamed by my own scent, because, i think, my mother is such a FREAKFACE about human smells. if i got in the car for her to bring me to school and i had not showered that morning, but rather the day/night before, she would hold her nose the whole way to school. now, i do not think i was an unusually smellly girl. in fact, i wore perfume and b.o. bar everyday to guard against that. and, she never even bothered to sniff to see if i did actually stink. just the knowledge that i hadn't showered that morning was enough to convince her that a foul smell this way comes. it fucked me up, i've been freaked out that my mere presence is potentially offensive because of my possible funk.

but this fear, like many other interesting and adorable quirkinesses of growing up in my house, is being laid down, friends.

because, i realized, my mother is insane.

exhibit one:

my mother cannot use public bathrooms because if someone comes in while she is using it and they start to do their business and she realizes it may be more than a mere tinkle session, SHE WILL GAG. does the person actually have to produce a smell worthy of gagging? no. in fact, i could come into the bathroom and just make farting noises by zerbetting my forearm and her gag reflex would be having a disco party in her throat.

exhibit two:

my mother will not leave the house without having sprayed perfume all over herself in some attempt to not have to smell anything organic, ever. last summer when i went home after graduation to "find a job" and "save money" before i "went to grad school" (took 3 months, found a bad one with bad pay, there are no plans for application in the near future), i would know when she left the house because i could smell the jean nate or halston (bip bip) wafting in under my door, giving me a headache. now, if you are into perfuming, good for you. i, myself, have pretty much given up the habit. i find scented lotion does the job just as well, less oppressively and all the while softening my skin. plus, it doesn't really get the perfume funk all over my clothes, so if i want to say, smell like peaches one day and almonds the next, and wear the same shirt more than once before laundry day, there is no inter-lotion-clash. this is very important for someone who does not own their own washer/dryer, is not a clothes hound, and hates the laundrymat. [nod] plus, any of you who know me well know my obsession with soft skin. [nod]. up with lotion, people. up with fucking lotion.

it was much to my chagrin, then, when i discovered, upon her return from a trip home, my sister had swiped a bunch of my mother's uber-strong parfum. the insanity lives on, apparently. neat. but then again, SURPRISE. my nerdbomber sister will no doubt, within the next few years, prove herself to have picked up every single one of my parents' fucked up qualities. poor girl.

but i digress.

my final exibit, and i think most exemplary of my mother's nutsy coo coo-ness, exhibit three:

this event is affectionately known about to our near and dear as "the danny episode".

one day, my mother was driving my brother and his friend danny (read: danny is the kid. THE kid. the one that all his friends, including my brother, tortured. the kid who they went to his house and instead of playing vid vids, like he wanted, made him, through friendly violence, play basketball and then go swimming. the kid who they mimmicked when he whined. the kid, whose name is, to this day, part of our daily venacular, used to indicate that the person to whom the name is attributed is being a whiny bitch or just got played. basically, danny was the punk of the group.) home from school. danny, the poor boy, had the misfortune of cutting the cheese on the way. what ensued has been imitated by my brother lo these years after: she started gagging and freaking out, eventually vomiting on herself. yes, vomiting on herself.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAHi'mabaddaughterHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

was the fart really that bad? probably not. it was probably just like, i don't know, a school cafeteria pizza fart or something. you know, normal junior high stuff.

had she even smelled it? we don't know. the key thing here is that she knew a fart had been laid and that knowledge alone was enough to start her hoggling.

is it any wonder, then, friends, that being raised by a woman of such olfactory weakness that i may have been a bit nervous about my smell? probably not.

i am only thankful that not only was i not affected to the point that #1, i couldn't learn to enjoy my own humanness, and #2, appreciate the pheromonal aphrodisiac that is the right smelling man. cologne is nice, and i certainly have irrational physiological reactions to certain ones, weak knees stuff.

but holy shit, the human smell of a man? or at least, the right amount of smell from the right man? that is the fucking stuff.

i have no good summation for this. i am already past that, remembering my first real pantie wetting pheromonal experience.