day 12

As someone who structures their day entirely around food: what to have for breakfast: eggs and bacon if it’s a real weekend feasting or granola if I’m pretending to be classy, then a mid morning summin’ summin’, nicely interspersed with many a coffee bought from sexy barista with the curly hair – which I absolutely cannot afford – and then culminating in the pinnacle of the day, lunch / dinner and lastly DESSERT, but I’ve had absolutely no appetite this week. 

I’ve gone to bed WITHOUT dinner, twice. TWICE, I tell you and not awoken in the middle of the night desperate for foods like a baby bird. Maybe this is a sign that my body is accepting this new zen/ libidoless state? Or does my body think that I’m in a crisis situation, and the little beings inside my brain, like in the movie Inside Out are trying to balance out my emotions (why is she not masturbating or having coffee?? Or chocolate! She must be dying). Maybe my brain thinks that I’m stuck on a mountain somewhere and is attempting to force my body to store up the nutrients, so I stay full like a chubby squirrel? Does anyone clued in about biology or any kind of science want to do a study on this. Food lover somehow not hungry?!?! Discuss. 

Maybe this is a sign that my body is accepting this new zen/ libidoless state? Or maybe my brain thinks I’m stuck on a mountain somewhere so is attempting to force my body to store up the nutrients, so I stay full like a chubby squirrel?

My sense of smell however, hugely heightened. My family always used to tease me for smelling food before I ate it. Inhaling the aroma of an earthy potato while it was still seconds from my mouth. I had this one muslin cloth (aka mussy) that I used to drag around with me to every playdate I reluctantly attended, every tap recital (I watched Annie and felt inspired, so sue me) and hold mussy up to my nose, breathing in the heavenly cleanly scent. 

And recently, even now I still find there’s something kind of hypnotising about the sounds and smells of a launderette. The whir of the washing machine. Plus that smell of home. Clean laundry = safety in my brain. A Sunday roast. A fire burning. And the smell of Ariel non bio tablets. Bliss. 

My sense of smell almost lead me into the arms of a random man this week. A man on a run came past me today and smelt SO INCREDIBLE. It was this intense musk interspersed with deodorant, interspersed with damn, something else. I fancy pretty much everyone at the moment. Can you tell?? Even though I don’t feel particularly connected to my own sexuality, I’m sexualising pretty much everyone, to a frankly inappropriate degree. It’s probably not helping that in this ole pandemic we’re in, meeting new people is a pretty rare occurrence. 

It got me thinking about what is it that makes something or someone sexy? In everyday life, it can be something so banal. One of my favourite accounts on the internet has an entire section dedicated to simple things that turn you on. Someone driving. Holding their jaw when they think. To the more obviously animalistic, someone fresh out of the shower, cologne, sweat. I love that when I get a whiff of the Abercrombie and Fitch perfume I’m taken back to 12 year old me, visiting the store with my mum for my birthday and feeling both thrilled and mortified that she’d forced an extremely well packaged male model to pose for a photo with me. 

I love that when I get a whiff of the Abercrombie and Fitch perfume I’m taken back to 12 year old me, visiting the store with my mum for my birthday and feeling both thrilled and mortified that she’d forced an extremely well packaged male model to pose for a photo with me. 

Smell is hugely important to attraction, association, memory especially for me. I once went on a date with a boy and realized halfway through that he smelt like chlorine, like an actual physical pool, and then promptly got in a taxi when we left the cinema claiming I had EXPLOSIVE diarrhea but would love to see him again!! 

If anyone has a friend who smells like clean laundry, just introduce them to me in 28 days, yeah? Hopefully my appetite will have come back by then.