Animalic
Quiet on the set! Dim the house lights, ready the “applause” sign, cue the guest-blogging-husband theme music… and, action!
“Hello and welcome, folks, to another edition of Ina’s Husband Knows Nothing About Perfume! Yes, your regularly-scheduled dose of perfume reviews and insights has been moved to tomorrow, when perfume aficionado Donna Hathaway will steer this ship back on course. In the meantime, an olfactory-challenged novice has the helm! Watch out!”
Okay, enough of that shtick. It was going from cheesy television show to something nautical, and that transition is too much for my tired mind to make right now. As long-time readers of this fairly young blog may know, when my wife gives me the task of writing here, my first instinct is to run away. Perfume is not a subject in which I am knowledgeable or even very interested. (I can hear your shocked gasps from here — an American man not interested in perfume?!) But over time, I must admit that I have grown to enjoy them. Part of being home with my wife is smelling perfumes, whether just floating in the air, on her, or when she asks me to smell something. Some women will wear a perfume for years (not to mention men who wear Old Spice or Polo for decades), making it part of their identity, but I don’t associate an individual fragrance with Ina. She is always trying something new and will often be covered in pleasant smells that she has dabbed on here or there to test. Ina will always be Ina, but she smells different all the time… and it’s always enjoyable to find out what she’s going to smell like today.
Before Ina became the perfume nut connoisseur that she is, perfumes were in two categories for me: “Smells good” and “Yuck”. That hasn’t changed much, but the other day Ina had me smell Stoned, and after it died down a bit I found myself saying, “There’s something animalic about this that I don’t like.” Ina was just as shocked as I was at the utterance, and with wide eyes she said, “There is an animalic note in it!” I think she may have even been proud of me in that moment. Yes, even Neanderthal husbands like hers can learn a thing or two about perfume, given enough time, exposure, and patience.
10 comments April 10th, 2007