In through the nose…

Here’s something I love: the mingled smell of cigarette smoke, hairspray and fancy lady perfume. It’s an odd combo, I know, but I have good reason for this love.

When I was a high-school aged creature, I was co-editor of our crappy school paper. How crappy? So crappy that it didn’t have its own edition, but was done in conjunction with several other high schools and the kind assistance of a local paper. Once a month my co-editors and I got to venture from our hokey county districts into the big city to work up our page or two of the latest edition. When we first arrived, we were guided by a very earnest young reporter who, to her credit, never made us feel like the cringey, adolescent idiots that we were. She taught us about picas and bylines, and how to think about stories from different angles.

And then one day we showed up and the earnest young reporter was gone. She was off to another post, and in her place was a lady. A Lady. And I don’t mean a tea drinking, pearl wearing, legs crossed at the ankles lady. I’m talking tall, gorgeous, dressed to kill, red nails and the longest most elegant cigarettes I had ever seen.  To my eyes, eyes which were  stuck out in the county miles from anything, she was like a fantastic alien creature.

Let me take a moment to explain to the young ‘uns among you that back in my high school days, students had their own smoking area at the high school. A small section of asphalt with a painted white line around it and the words SMOKING AREA written inside that line. Those were freer times, special times. And I took full advantage of them by smoking my face off. But they were simple smokes. Country smokes.

So when the Lady pulled out the longest pack of cigarettes I had ever seen, perched one between two impeccably manicured fingers, and lit up, I felt a revelatory moment upon me. This was what it meant to be a woman.  She spoke to us like adults, she talked about life and men, she had been to Boston. BOSTON. And she let us smoke with her. Right there, at her desk. She didn’t make us go outside and stand inside a painted white line. She had a life, a glamourous life that involved, I felt certain,  some sort of fabulous apartment and crystal cocktail glasses. She was IT. She was what we should aspire to be!

Olfactory triggers are some of the strongest that humans can have. I wasn’t aware at the time that the complex mix of odours around the Lady was settling in for a nice long stay in my hippocampus. I enjoyed that heady fug like a meditation – just there, in the moment, loving it.

And then I grew up. I quit smoking, got a dog, wore sensible shoes and forgot about the Lady. The world around me became virtually scent free, thanks to a workplace ban on scented products, and a busy life that seemed to make perfumes and other lady items into frippery; extraneous to my existence. Until the day that a friend met me for dinner.  She entered my home and with her came a trail of perfume. Sophisticated perfume.  My friend also happened to be a smoker, and this combined with the perfume caused a shock reaction in my brain. I hurtled backward and landed firmly on the newsroom desk of the Lady.  (In truth, it was probably the features department.)  My friend didn’t have it quite right. Her hair products were too modern, and not nearly AquaNet enough. But it was close.

And so it was that I decided to embrace, albeit on the sly, my love of this particular aroma. If you see a lady who fits the bill pass by me on the street, see if you can catch it: an almost imperceptible lean toward her as she passes, my eyes closed, inhaling.  Inhaling a little possibility.