Not Without My Smells!

Sometimes I feel determined to get my smell back. If this were a soap opera, it would totally happen. My lover with fantastic hair would say, “You will have your smells back!” Or, in the less feministy version, “I will get your smells back for you if it’s the last thing I do.” Perhaps things would take a bittersweet turn, so that the first thing I would smell again would be a whiff of his hair as he perished.

The spring after my surgery I offered myself up for experiments to a doctor who was cited in a New York Times article about a man whose lost sense of smell returned (he had an accident rather than surgery). The doctor basically told me there was nothing he could do, though he did offer to allow me to make an appointment through his office. In lieu of such medical intervention I sometimes stand in the shower and try to conjure my smell back on my own, imagining the various products I am using in my hair and on my body. Lemongrass, grapefruit, ill-defined conditioner scent.

Shortly after my surgery I also imagined a film about my experience – my friend Irene would make it, and my friend Chris named it: “Not Without My Smells! The Amelie Hastie Story.” (I mentioned this imaginary film in a scholarly article I wrote, which strangely no one has ever commented on.) When I think about this film, I only imagine a series of montage sequences now. I would start, of course, with the obvious smell guide: my faithful dog. We would train in smelling-nose dog classes, and then we would go out on the field on our own. He would put together exercises for me, organizing several dogs in a row, their butts facing me. He would sniff them, looking at me to summon me over, but I would stop halfway through the group, realizing the folly and the grossness, comically shrugging my shoulders. That Arlo!

Other experiments, with people, would include flowers or household cleaners. But I don’t know what would do the trick. In a moment of frustration, I see myself standing outside the window of a bakery, calling forth, “Ol-faccccc-tionnnn!”  This story must have a happy ending, but ultimately I feel hampered by realism. Somewhere between dogs’ butts, honeysuckle, and Pine-sol, my smell must still reside. But how?