Over the last few weeks, I have gradually, bit by bit, in increments too tiny to notice, but growing steadily along with the fear and trepidation I have about it – I have been losing my sense of smell. This is alarming because I am a great lover of scent and smells and nothing brings memories back hard, fast and unedited than an unexpected hit of fragrance.

My nose is like a time machine. Some industrial cleaner residue coming off the floor of a recently mopped office building and I am transported against my will to the boy’s high school I had to attend during the summer, because my grades were not good enough to allow me the freedom of June/July/August that other children took for granted. I smell the artificial ammoniated pine/lemon that is the unmistakable odor of egalitarian shared spaces of government buildings like schools and the DMV and I suddenly without warning am reliving the memory of the first time a boy told me I had a nice ass.

I love that my nose is sensitive, and in general, all smells are important to me, even though they might not be what is considered pleasant. When my beautiful tiny Chihuahua/pomeranian Gudrun has been chewing on a toy for many hours, I can smell all the air she has swallowed in the process in her eggy sour and sulfurous, a-dog-satisfied emissions. Of course it’s farty, but I love my little one, so the farts smell good. I might not like another dog’s farts, but my dogs farts represent her quality of life, so they reflect well on me.

Whether its due to allergies or the santa ana winds or just general malaise, my sense of smell has deserted me. it’s tragic to the nth degree, like Beethoven going deaf, as I believe I am a genius at smelling things, and by proxy, tasting things. As my sense of smell diminishes, I find less and less joy in food – craving vinegar and mustardy dishes – or painfully sweet desserts – something strong to jolt my senses into awareness. Like my nose and mouth need jumper cables attached to a bottle of hot sauce.  I was missing out on the subtleties of flavor, the things you can only taste when you are really paying attention and listening with your palate.  For weeks I have had radio silence in my nose and mouth. Bummer.

Today, like a holiday gift, my sense of smell is back, and I only noticed it because I had been wearing my favorite jeans and I was squatting down (trying to get some new pink chaps zipped – there I said it – chaps) and I smelled something really not good. It was yeasty and yellowy and sulfurous and ammoniated but not in an pine lemon industrial cleanser way, more of an organic urine way, and also with a dash of cumin and onion and black pepper and then I realized, the smell, the awful smell, was me, or rather, it was my jeans.

I had not washed them in ages, I don’t even remember the last time. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I have ever washed them as they came from Barney’s co-op and so you know what jeans from there are like, and how are you supposed to wash that stuff anyway? They are so pricey and stiff and ass tight that if the weave of the denim even touches water they’ll be hard to put on, and god forbid – they shrink in the dryer  - you will never ever get them over your legs again.

I never wash my jeans, nor do I dry clean them. I just try to rotate them enough where the dirt in them just kind of loses its dirtiness or something. I don’t know. I am just lazy too. Anyway, since I had no sense of smell, I didn’t realize how filthy these jeans were, and when I realized that the stench was my jeans I was immediately freaked out because I have been wearing them for weeks now out in public. So if you saw me out and smelled something bad, I am apologizing now. That was me. And no I haven’t washed them yet.

I really thought highly of myself and perhaps it’s the sin of pride that led me to not pay attention to what I was doing. I had done a good deal of fantastic writing that day and felt princely or something stupid like that, and it was time to get ready for a nice night out, a good time burlesque show, my first in years, and dolling up for dancing is a lovely gig, and in the shower I thought it was ok to just zone out and fancy myself a writer and a dancer and not a shaver like I should have been doing.

I ran my sharp pink daisy right over my left hand, taking a big slice off the nail of my pinky. I can’t even write about it, it’s ghastly. It bled a lot, as those nail beds are full of tiny capillaries and unfortunately for me, nerves. It fucking throbs with pain, each heartbeat containing a rhythmic reminder that I did something bad.

I am also typing with my injured hand so right now I feel like there is no escape. There’s no way out of our bodies. If we hurt them, we are stuck with them until time gradually seals the wound and the skin, once cut, reinvents itself as a hardened callus, and hesitant, distrustful and slow, cell by cell finally grows together over the straits and channels of muscle, fat, vein and bone. Gross. I am so grossed out right now.

I was practicing with new fans, silk instead of my usual feathers to accommodate the low ceiling height of the stage,  so my hands were full of nasty little splinters from the cheapie wooden fan staves, as disposable as chopsticks, and I’d spent hours learning a new song on my old 1920 supertone guitar and in the painful process, subsequently and uniformly tore off the gel coating on each fingernail trying to cheat my way to a F#m with my short and weak grip, leaving behind a dry whitish residue that looked like I had previously been hosting postage stamps on each cuticle.

My fingers have always betrayed me, and my beauty has long been offended by the shape and grasp of them. I do believe I have terrible hands, and I mistreat them and abuse them as if they were Cinderella and the rest of my body comprised of the two hideous stepsisters. My hands do all the work and I just complain at how awful they are and how bad they look and then I go and hurt them all the time. It’s really too Freudian/Jungian and bizarre, and there is no prince, no ball, no fairy godmother to save my hands from myself.

People often talk about hating their bodies, but it is usually limited to areas that run to fat. i have tried to be kind to myself around food and weight and size but when it comes to my hands I really act as if they are not a part of me. this is so stupid because in many ways they are the most important part, the facilitators, the fixers, the doers of the body. I cut my hand but my hand also cleaned the wound, and fixed it up enough so that I could still dance and do wonders with the new fantastic silk fans.

The splinters in my palms didn’t bother me when the audience exploded with laughter and applause at my long awaited return to burlesque dancing. I shook many hands and wrapped my arms around many old friends and my hands held up delicious drinks and salted chili mango pieces to my mouth and clapped loudly at the jokes and routines of all the other dancers. My hands drove me home safely and dutifully took off my long false eyelashes and glittery blue makeup before putting the rest of me to bed.

My hands are ever faithful no matter how much I torture them and gossip about them and complain about them and neglect them do their millions of jobs wordlessly and well, and I wonder if I decided that I would love them, what could they do?