Phantom Odour
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 This morning, when I was getting dressed to go to work, I kept smelling this strange smell. It was a smell that was atypical and difficult to discern; it could have been animal, vegetable, mineral, or any combination of those three. My socks didn't look so hot, but their smell was nothing like this phantom odour that I was trying to locate.
Eventually, I decided that it had to be the cat, because he seemed to be the only proximal constant while I was getting ready. He cuddled with my face when the alarm clock went off, sat at the other end of the shower while I washed my hair, sniffed my mascara during its curious application, sat on my shoulders while I checked my e-mail, and went through my purse while I put on my coat and shoes. He was everywhere and the smell was everywhere, so it seemed natural to peg it on Oskar.
When I arrived at work, I could smell the smell again. It was a weird mixture of sweet mustiness with a sour undertone. I lifted my shirt and gave it a sniff.
I am not all that bright sometimes, apparently. The cat was not the only proximal constant this morning. It never occurred to me that I could be carrying around the proximal constant. If it had occurred to me, and gawd but I wish it had, I would not be sitting at my desk right now stewing in a stench cloud.
"Stewing in a stench cloud", by the way, is not imbued with all the lustre, the razzle-dazzle, that it seems it could project.
My shirt stinks, and I have no idea how this happened. It was hanging up in my closet along with some of my other clothing, none of which looked disgusting. I can't figure out why it would smell this way.
If it was a normal stink, like onions from cooking or incense from a shop or even cigarette smoke, I could live with it. This is not a normal stink, though. It is a little sweet, a little rotten, a little sour. It smells like I had a mesh bag filled with fruit, corned beef, and maybe a wad of some moist flower petals and left it to moulder on a hanger in the closet next to this shirt. I imagine that a mummy might smell quite a bit like this in its early stages when it is freshly wrapped but not quite entirely dry.
I imagine that you are wondering what I am still doing here in my cubicle wearing this disgusting thing rather than running home to fix the situation.
There happens to be a blizzard going on outside. I checked out the window of some lucky upper with a window to the outside, and I could not see past the parking lot. I am not waiting outside for a bus home, walking four blocks to the apartment, walking four blocks back to the bus stop, waiting outside for another bus, and then bussing back across town to work in the middle of a blizzard. It would take me a couple of hours and a lot of walking through blinding snow just to stop smelling like a dampish mummy.
Now that I put it like that with the dampish mummy reference, I really should fix my stenchfulness, but I don't want to leave, because a bunch of us are ordering in Kentucky Fr!ed Ch!cken for lunch, and I haven't had such greasy fair in at least a week.
Perhaps, if I sneak off and rub a drumstick under my shirt, it will overpower the disembowelled corpsey smell. It could be like that time I spilled Italian dressing all over my sweater and people kept asking me what smelled so good.
Come to think of it, this corpsey smell might be what was attracting the cat this morning. At one point, he stuck his head under my shirt and licked the inside of it. Now I see that I mistook his attention for affection when he was probably reacting to an urge to roll in something dead.
Reader Comments (17)
My parents, though lovely in almost every way, are just this side of crazy cat people. This side being the wrong side, the 'your house smells like cat pee and all the food has small hairs in it' side.
The last time I dropped out of school before finishing my BA (how many times did I drop out? A lot), my Brian and I lived with my parents for a bit while we looked for jobs and an apartment in Boston. While we were there, I got a temp job downtown in a fancy office in a skyscraper, one where I didn't really fit in with the work culture for oh so many reasons, but where people seemed to regard me with some affection for being such a daffy young eccentric.
Anyway. One morning I was riding the subway to work and noticed that the bum next to me smelled like pee. "Oh, how vile!" I thought, as I slid over a seat and flipped to the funny pages of my newspaper. When I got off at my stop and walked to work, I couldn't help noticing that the whole city - every street and every alley - seemed to smell like pee, and I even wondered if I might be pregnant, since I was so sensitive to it this particular morning.
Finally, after I'd walked through a gold-and-marble lobby that smelled like pee and ridden up to the 23rd floor in a pee-smelling elevator, I realized that it was not the world that had been peed on, but my shirt, which I'd laid out on a chair the night before. And so I told my supervisor I was going out for coffee, and ran three blocks to the nearest discount clothiers, which was just opening for the morning, and bought a new (too large and poorly fitting) shirt to replace my piddled-on one.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I feel your pain.
The End.
Amazing you should say 'corned beef.' I have a horrible story about dampish rotting flesh smells that I won't share here because it appears I am the first commentator....but I did once smell such a smell and it turned out to be a baggie of pastrami that had slowly worked its way to the bottom of my bookbag, camaflauging itself against the vinyl. I found it a long time later. It was one of those strange huge backpacks that seemed to have bermuda triangle parts where things would disappear.
I was haunted by that rotting pastrami smell for weeks and later I had these kind of flashbacks.
I hope that won't happen to you.**
**An aside to say--I stumbled across you and I love how this post is written...how well you wrote about your stinky shirt.
Stinky girls, unite!
When I was in grad school, I inherited a very pretty leather jacket my grandmother had made for her when she was in Hong Kong. When I got it, it still smelled like my grandmother's house-- faint mothballs, lavendar, and dust. I debated cleaning it, but decided that the scent wasn't so powerful. Besides, it reminded me more of Gran that way.
I realized I'd made a mistake the day I wore the jacket to school, and one of my classmates looked up and said, "Something smells like old lady!"
wow.
am just a little grossed out.
isn't this why they invented Old Navy?
H & M?
If I don't see you , have a great time in Costa Rica!!!!
Gotta love when you realize the smelly thing is you...LOL, hope you burned that shirt!
This was fantastic. You will be sniff-checking the clothes from your closet for weeks now!
Could you have, like I have, possibly mistaken a to-be-laundered shirt for a freshly laundered one, thus hanging it in the closet?
Done that a time or two and worried all day that I was emitting unbearable stinkiness. Awful feeling, and, no, I wouldn't have braved the blizzard either.
Of course, in a show of bravado, you could have jettisoned the shirt and wrapped your long wooly scarf about your midriff, a la a fuzzy tube top. How exciting the work day could be.
Have a great trip!
We're having a blizzard here as well.
Regarding odd smells, what I hate even more than an outright bad smell is one that you initially think is something savory, then suddenly realize it's actually something disgusting.
Have a wonderful time escaping the cold and snow in paradise. I'm more than a little jealous.
I was going to suggest hunting down a co-worker who wisely came to work in the layered look and linger just long enough for them to bring up the topic of odiferous mummies or some-such entity. Once you have extolled your situation, they might peel off an extra layer in pity.
However, I think I prefer the fuzzy tube-top Zaza suggested. Much better visual.
Sung ala John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane"
"I'm stewin' in a stench cloud,
Don't know when I'll smell good again,
Stewin' in stench cloud,
wild an-i-mals will hunt me down"
I could go on, but I won't
Nora, Ozma, and Roo, thanks for making me feel less lonely in my stinkiness. It made me feel better to laugh at the aromatic misfortunes of others.
Blackbird, I apologize for grossing you out. I seem to be doing that to you lately.
Abigail, I have retired that shirt to the bottom of my laundry hamper until I can face it again.
Belinda, yes, I am paranoid now. Would you believe that my office just declared today that we stop wearing scents? Do you think that is connected to my shirt fiasco?
Zaza, your fuzzy tube top idea rocks, except that my scarf is not fuzzy. It is plaid, though, so I could pull off a punk look if I find myself in this situation again.
TB, you are so right. I once thought that the Fiery One was cooking supper, but it was the cat's fart. Ick.
DD, you are smarter than I. That option never occurred to me, but that's not surprising considering that I was dim enough to wear what I did in the first place.
Dawn, oh Dawn. Your song rawks. It's an earworm for sure.
unfortunately, i know exactly how you feel/smell. i too have endured the "what smells like dead animals, poop, and a compost pile? oh no, it's my shirt/backpack!"
i also have no idea what causes this smell. it appears to happen randomly every three or four years. i tend to just throw out the offending article, as i'll never be able to use it again without triggering the memory of that awful, rank smell.
but have a fantastic, unstinky trip!
"Belinda, yes, I am paranoid now. Would you believe that my office just declared today that we stop wearing scents? Do you think that is connected to my shirt fiasco?"
they probably thought it was some weird hippy artist fragrance which you had to read goethe to understand and put the kybosh on future hippy scents quick.
This post made my day. Thanks.
hmm... sometimes it can be the washing machine - apparently they can go bad - something to do with soap remains and bacteria. It happened to my sister-in-law who got an old washing machine for free. Every time they opened the filter it smelled like poo (ick). Knowing why doesn't make the smell less digusting though... I had to throw out a pair of pants for the same reason. So annoying.
A beautifully constructed story and entirely too funny! Loved the zing at the end. Thanks for the laugh.
Or it could be used as a weapon to keep people you don't want to talk to away from you!
"Back, back! I'll lift my arm and I mean it!"
*laughing*