When my wife first told me I don’t smell, I assumed either that we hadn’t been together long enough for her to notice, or she was too in love with me to tell me the painful truth. I had worn deodorant more or less daily for the 15 or so years since my mid-teens, because society and the Africa division of the Lynx organisation had conditioned me to believe I would otherwise never get laid.
But once my wife told me it was unnecessary, I was liberated. I moved rapidly through the stages of relief that come with escaping any fear-based consumerist purchase: excitement, financial empowerment, acceptance and finally complacency.
For the first few years, I worried about the day she would admit she had been lying and could no longer live with my pungent stink, but that day has never come, and because she has since told me many things that have hurt far more, I have to assume it never will.
It’s not that I am incapable of producing any odour. Soon after waking up a few days ago, I kissed my 7-year-old, at which point he immediately got out of bed, ran to the bathroom and came back with my toothbrush and toothpaste.
But when it comes to the thick, cheesy stink of BO, I don’t have it, apparently never have, and presumably never will.
This realisation has saved me hundreds – maybe even thousands – of dollars, and has eliminated any concerns about whatever zinc neodecanoate is and what it might be doing to my body.
Nevertheless, as with most significant moments in our lives, my lack of smell is something I have thought about less and less as the years have passed. I’m only writing a column about it now because I mentioned it in passing to a colleague recently and she looked shocked, then said “You should write a column about it”.
But I’m a professional journalist, not an opinion writer, and because I didn’t want to make this all about me, I decided to do some research.
I typed: “why don’t I smell” into Google, at which point I learned that my absence of body odour is caused by a genetic mutation. It’s a mutation that apparently also causes dry earwax, which I also have. I learned that it’s extremely common in East Asian populations, in which an estimated 80+% of people have it, but among Europeans, like me, that figure drops to somewhere between 1-3%.
I’m not sure how to feel about all that. Objectively, I know it should make me feel special - I’m literally one in 100 - but instead it makes me feel bored.
As when someone explains how they did a magic trick, learning the reasons for my odourlessness has made it less interesting, not more. It has transformed my most interesting personal attribute from a fascinating mystery story that intrigues people at parties to a nerdy factoid that will make people at parties want to avoid me like a bad smell.
So, from now on, if I talk about it at all, I’ll make sure I lead with the fact I haven’t worn deodorant in 15 years, and, I’ll leave the genetic mutation stuff to the end, when everyone’s stopped listening anyway.
Greg Bruce is a senior multimedia journalist for NZ Herald.
