In the summer of 1989, my cousin told me that I smelled like whole milk. For whatever reason, I found this to be profoundly offensive, so to retaliate I told her that she smelled like egg yolk and raisins. As a wise man once said, an eye for an eye. I was bothered by her comment because smell can make or break a person. My mother made me switch orthodontists when I was 12 because my initial one smelled like canned crab meat.

Have you ever stopped seeing someone because they smelled wrong? Not bad, per se, just wrong? I have. A little while back I was dating a person who, for all intents and purposes, should have been my dream girl. She was a hot Jew who wore the nicest sneakers I've ever seen in my life. She was chivalrous and smart. She had excellent taste in movies and made me really good mixes that I played on repeat until I accidentally dropped my stereo on the floor and wasn't able to listen to music anymore. But she didn't smell right. Unlike me, she showered every day and, unlike me, she did her laundry more than twice a year. It had nothing to do with hygiene. But we'd crawl into bed and I'd go to lay my head on her shoulder and everything in me would recoil. She smelled like an amalgamation of new tennis balls, a basement and lamb. Also, a pond. In other words, no. No to her. Moving along.

A couple weeks ago I was making out with a bouncer who works at my bar. She pulled away for a minute and rested her nose on the corner of my mouth. "I like the way you smell," she said.

"What do I smell like?" I asked.

"Like baby powder" she answered. "And sex."

I'll take that over a dairy drink high in saturated fat any day. We ended up sleeping together, and I reveled in her scent all the while: that of wrapping paper, aftershave and soup. Also, sex. It's funny how some people just smell like the act, in a way that's thoroughly alluring.

When I was in L.A. earlier this month, I took it upon myself to purchase a bottle of Shania Twain perfume. I don't know why I did this. She's really annoying (sucks that her husband cheated, but still) and the song "That Don't Impress Me Much" makes me want to curl into a ball and die. Furthermore, her scent smells like spoiled candy apples and a scratch-and-sniff grape sticker. But I made the purchase because I was tired of being envious of people with signature scents. For better or for worse, the type of person who'd walk into a room and make their presence known simply because of their fragrance. Just as some people don't understand that Skechers and capri pants are to be avoided at all costs, I don't get fragrances. I know what smells right and what smells wrong on other people, but when it comes to shopping for things of the olfactory variety, I'm much like Tai at the start of Clueless. In other words, clueless.

I'm not sure what the legendary Helen Keller smelled like, but she said something beautiful about all this: "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived."