This morning I kissed my girlfriend and just as our lips locked she yanked her head back and coughed and said, “Oh God, I’m going to throw up. Did you brush your teeth yet?”
I had, in fact, just brushed my teeth and my tongue, thank you very much. I even flossed. Flossed! I never floss. I reflexively cupped my hand over my mouth and siphoned my breath through my nose. It smells Aquafresh, it doesn’t get any fresher, I protested. But the lines in her forehead spelled Death Breath.
Granted, it’s hard to smell your own body odor or breath, but in all likelihood it wouldn’t have been so repellent to most noses. The problem is that Naomi doesn’t have most noses. She has supernatural scentsories. So much so that if more people had her olfactory setup, we could phase out K-9s at airports and border crossings and let dogs be dogs.
Women do in fact have more advanced sniffers than men and while some people may view such bionic senses as a blessing, she mostly picks up the fetid, the vile, the malodorous molecules choking the air. Things that I don’t even notice, or ever care to actually. The faintest hint of burning hair or B.O. or baby shit sends her into monosyllabic grunts like Eww! or Yuk! Out of nowhere, a vintage shop smells like wet ferret, or my burrito smells like rotting corpse. She paints a putrid portrait of this planet and looks to me for a solidarity that I simply cannot provide. “Stick your snout in here,” she says, her eyes watering as she points inside her son’s sneaker. I oblige, and of course, Justice’s footwear smells fresh and fine and like liquid Tide, as it should since it just went through a spin cycle. But somehow she snuffs straight through that façade to the fungus that inhabits the sole.
Overall, I prefer to be impervious to the slew of scents that scar her. Although, her beak does have some benefits - namely in the appreciation and understanding of the nuances of wine. Of course, since she is the heart, soul and brains behind Roshambo Winery, one would expect, or at least hope, that she grasps all the complexities of flavor that go into fine wine. Luckily, she has it in spades. Not that you’d ever hear her pontificating about a hint of honeydew or the flutter of fresh-cut lemongrass in a Sauvignon Blanc, but if you pressed her she could run circles around the tasting notes.
Me, on the other hand, different story. No matter how hard I try - even if I swirl and sniff and sip and swish the wine while reading about its dominant pear-essence – all I taste is fermented grape juice. Whenever the waiter passes me the wine list or splashes me a sample, I sheepishly slide it over to my girlfriend, mumbling something about how “she’s the expert.” This is greatly emasculating, as you might imagine, since men are supposed to hold the secret decoder ring for wine’s esoterica. But Naomi has a much more sophisticated palate and owns a winery for God’s sake. I’d rather swallow my pride than bluff my way through a corked bottle.
Sure, I’ve learned a lot about wine over the past two years with her. It’s become an integral element of my lifestyle. And while the hints and traces of this or that still don’t blip my sensory radar, I know which brands and varietals I savor. But I still wouldn’t know a tainted bottle if you squeezed the cork’s mold onto my tongue. This was evident during our recent Valentine’s dinner.
I finally took the training wheels off and ordered a pricey bottle of Syrah, all by myself. Our waiter splashed a sample in my glass I swirled and sniffed and sipped and swished and swallowed and nodded yes, I love it! He poured a glass for Naomi, who swirled and sniffed and nearly vomited in the bowl of edamame. “You’re not serious,” she looked askew at me. “Can’t you smell the cork?” The gentleman sniffed apologized and brought us back a new bottle.
“How can you not smell that?”
All I could do was laugh at her dumb luck. Thank God I can’t smell that. After all, ignorance is bliss and I’m easy to please.
Now pass me that carton of supposedly sour milk.
posted by Scott Keneally @ 11:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home