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Recently in Salon Health & Body

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Sex secrets of the stars!
A Taoist pimp offers an astrological seduction plan to make every sign a helpless love slave.
By Virginia Vitzthum
[07/27/99]

Using up too much too soon
Pushing the body to athletic extremes may be harmful to your health.
By Andrew Taber
[07/26/99]

Urge
Episode 5: Executive quickie
He's twice her age but she still knows how to make him feel young.
By Tracy Quan
[07/26/99]

Sexpert Opinion
Topanga Canyon dreaming
A visit to L.A. brings back memories of losing my virginity and the tag-team seductions of my teen years.
By Susie Bright
[07/24/99]

Up in the air
Can a 20-minute oxygen session counteract the effects of living in L.A.?
By Debra Ollivier
[07/23/99]

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The onlookers suspected Feynman (with good reason) of being capable of some pretty sneaky tricks. Did he have a confederate who signaled which books had been touched? Who was the stooge? But then he'd challenge them to try -- and if they tried, they could usually do it too.

But unless Richard Feynman is standing there goading them, people usually don't sniff books to see who's handled them, even if they want to know. It simply never occurs to us. And while studies have shown that mothers can recognize by smell which of several identical T-shirts has been worn by their own baby, as opposed to someone else's baby; and that babies in turn can distinguish the smell of T-shirts worn by their own mothers -- it's only because the nice people in the white coats ask them to try.

Most of us have a much better sense of smell than we realize. "When faced with formidable tasks, humans do quite well," says researcher Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, who studies the behavior and genetics of olfaction, among other areas. "They don't have to be trained or anything, they can just do it."

We can, but we hardly ever do. And if we do, people look at us strangely. You may think I'm strange just for writing about smell: I certainly think it's strange that you're reading this.

My friend Cynthia smells bread. "I want to know more about it before I eat it," is her sinister explanation. I don't sniff bread, but I sniff produce, and I learn a lot. A strawberry that doesn't smell like a strawberry is going to be one of those berries that resemble damp Styrofoam. A peach that doesn't smell peachy won't taste peachy. And smelling the stem end of the cantaloupe is a sure way to find a good one. "I never thought to do that," says Cynthia, wonderingly. I know she thinks I'm weird.

Indeed, I never see anyone else huffing those good produce scents, so I do it furtively. Casually. I raise the cantaloupe to my level, rather than stooping low, hoping that people will think I'm just eyeballing the fruit, a perfectly respectable thing to do.

The convention seems to be that we cannot smell anything unless it is drawn to our attention and we unbend to make a deliberate effort. It is acceptable to direct someone to a pleasant natural smell: "Take a breath of that ocean air," "Oh, smell that sagebrush." "Do I smell coffee?" It is somewhat acceptable to comment on an unpleasant smell if it's nonliving -- bus exhaust, roofing tar, cannon smoke.

Sniffing people or produce is thought to imply that an unpleasant odor has been detected, so it is unacceptable to note the smells of living things, even if the smells are nice. (In fact, it may be unacceptable to acknowledge that people might smell nice without the whole-hearted 24-hour aid of the fragrance industry.) "I can see you from here" and "I can hear you from here" are permissible remarks, but "I can smell you from here" usually is not.

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