The Friday Sex Blog [The Sense of Smell]

Hola mi Gente,
I wear cologne everyday. In the summer, I favor citrus scents and my favorite for a while was Jo Malone’s LimeBasil & Mandarin. I also loved their Verbenasof Provence. The drawback with the Malone line (and as with all citrus-based scents) is that they don’t last. The Fresh line has a great line of citrus scents which last only slightly longer. My favorite Fresh scent is Herispides. It’s to die for. I love fresh, subtle scents. Recently, I’ve taken to wearing Verbena by L’Occitane. Go to your nearest Sephora today and smell it while thinking of me.

Over the years, I have made several different scents my scent, and women always comment. There’s a method to my madness… LOL

Sex & the Sense of Smell

The sense of smell plays a huge role in kissing

 Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary, and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

-- Diane Ackerman

The best smell in the world is that man that you love.
-- Jennifer Aniston

I’ll never forget the time I received a panicked telephone call from a former lover. I hadn’t heard from her for years. In fact, I had heard she married and was doing the suburban thing. We had an affair totally based on sex and she was almost as much of a freak as I was. Anyway, when she calmed down enough to explain, I discovered the source of her anxiety. Apparently, her husband (who, she assured me, she loved, like, forever) went out and bought a cologne that was my signature scent while I was dating her. The scent (a Chanel for men no longer manufactured) evoked images and memories of yours truly at the most inappropriate time and it freaked her out. Why she then called me is beyond my understanding, so… Anyway… There’s more to this story, but that part will suffice for today.

The sense of smell is probably the oldest of our senses. It is the only sense directly connected to the brain. The reason why my ex-lover was thinking of me after so many years is because the sense of smell is highly involved in sexual function and pleasure. It’s also closely related to memory. Scientists speak of the concept of a “smell print” wherein memories are associated with certain smells. As with my anxious ex-lover (who feared she was having marital doubts), a certain scent will cause a person to vividly recall a memory associated with it. Smells are like fingerprints, highly individualized.

To further illustrate, the sense of smell is involved with the deeply embedded limbic brain -- what neuroscientists call the “emotional brain” or what has been identified as the emotional center of the brain. The limbic brain and the sense of smell go hand-in-hand when it comes to sex. For me there is no headier smell than the scent of a woman’s freshly washed vagina. There’s no greater aphrodisiac, at least for me, than the intoxicating mixture of soap and musk of a freshly washed woman. It literally makes me drool.

On the flip side, an artificially scented vagina is a huge turn-off. It communicates to me that the woman is not comfortable with her own scent. There’s a huge problem if I have to wade through the stink of something Proctor &Gamble produced to get at it. According to recent research, the region in the brain that is responsive to sexual-interest hormones is more than two times larger in men than women. According to other research, the smell of cooked cinnamon is a natural aphrodisiac for men.

Certain smells are associated with sexual interest in both men and women, however, the brain works through association and within a cultural context. In the U.S., we are obsessed by sterilization. We don’t take to smells well as a society. We spend a tremendous amount of money and exert a lot of energy and time in masking natural smells, and sterilizing surfaces (those soaps, BTW, actually increase bacteria ladies). I still remember my post on hair and vaginas and how so many women fiercely defended the practice of shaving their vags bald. The major reason? Hygiene! In fact, shavingis less hygienic and can lead to infections and disease.

Whatever, I find a little hair aesthetically pleasing. For me, hair adds a little “spice” -- something I enjoy.

Since ancient times, there has been a search for the scent that elicits sexual desire. Many ancient societies believed perfumes were aphrodisiacs and some new research suggests they may have been right. The Romans and Egyptians used copious amounts of musk. The musk used was derived from the anal glands of the Ethiopian civet cat. Researchsuggests that the scent of musk closely resembles that of testosterone, the hormone responsible for enhancing the sex drive in both men and women.

Other studies have demonstrated theimpact of floral and herbal essential oils on the nervous system. Sexual arousal and response is controlled by the two parts of the nervous system: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is responsible for preparing us for physical action and emergencies (i.e., the fight or flight syndrome); and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which stimulates relaxation. For those who need to relax in order to get in the mood, the PNS should be used, while those who need to be stimulated would do better by enhancing the SNS. According to the research, sandalwood, marjoram, lemon, chamomile, and bergamot stimulated the PNS. The SNS was stimulated by the scents of jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, patchouli, peppermint, clove, and bois de rose.

I guess the take away from this is that the sense of smell is integral to the sexual experience and you should exploit this fact so as to make your sexing more pleasurable and meaningful. Go out and find the scents that are appealing to you. Scents (as with other aphrodisiacs) need to be tailored to individuals, not large groups. Experiment with different essential oils and use them in carrier oils to prepare massage oils (as a prelude to sex), for example.

I often smell women as a way of committing them to memory. It’s almost a primal relic -- something passed down by my hunter/ warrior ancestors. I do it in a way that they don’t notice, but it’s one of the first things I do when I meet a woman. What an individual smells like tells you a lot about that individual. I may not remember your birthday, but I will always remember what your ass smells like! LOL

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…