Smell,

There was a man, not a very special start to a story, true, but he doesn't seem like a very special man. His looks are average, as are his
height and weight. In passing him on the street you might glance his way, but I doubt you would turn your head to gaze longer. Unless you were close that is, and even then you might not feel it. But if you like men, and you were pushed together in a crowd, then you would notice this not so special man. Then your stomach would flip, there would be a catch in your breath; your heart might thrum against its cage a little faster. You could feel a little light-headed, like you had just drunk a glass of champagne through a straw. I hate to say it but you would feel horny. You deny it? You think I am exaggerating?
Well you think that, I won't try to persuade you, and I certainly won't introduce you; not after what happened last time.

There are many men out there; myself included, who would give their right arm to have any effect on women, to be noticed and set apart from the crowd. I wish I could know that the focus of my desires would return the favour. But I am a mere mortal, and have to keep up with the usual route of self-denial and push ups to remain a viable option for
bedding the younger and firmer specimens I have such a predilection for. I accept that the trade off of pain and sweat is a fair one, not so the price our hero pays; (or should I call him anti-hero?)

This man, our not so special man, is alluring beyond belief, true, only at close range, but undeniably so anyway. He doesn't need to speak or
smile. He isn't cheeky or charming or even very funny, but there is something about him that entrances. I have seen women who hadn't noticed his presence five seconds before, relax into him like ice cream dripping from a cone, when they got too close. Why? I can only put it down to the smell of him, a pheromone that intoxicates any woman with in the reach of a breath. As far as I can tell it has always been so;
since puberty anyway.
When we were young, barely 12 his parents decided to send him to away to school because of complaints from his teachers. The complaints were
veiled and ambiguous but after a while it became clear that the problem was not his behaviour, but the inappropriate behaviour of the girls surrounding him that was causing concern. So for the respite of all parties he left us and went to the boys grammar school. And that I suppose is where the problems began.
The problem is twofold. Firstly the effect hardly endears him to men. Would you want a friend who always got the girl? Even when the girl was
yours? Or to have your mum purring around one of your mates like a cat on heat? No I think not. Even if you were secure enough to not feel
threatened by the attention he is receiving, you would be unusual in extreme to not ever be jealous.
Even though I count myself as a friend, I have to admit it took me a while to get over the smell. That which makes him so impossible to resist for women, seems to me slightly obscene. It is just too raw, too spicy. A dish which might smell great if you are eating it, can turn your stomach when you find the cold remains the next morning. It isn't nasty it just isn't appealing, to me or any man. There in lies the first problem, this super charged aroma is isolating.

Problem two is worse. For as long as he can remember women have been desperate to sleep with him, let's not be coy, not sleep, they have wanted him, without exception, for sex. Sounds good? Yeah but think about it, there isn't a woman in his life he can just talk to.
As far as he can tell women have no morality either, every woman he has ever been close to, whether she is married, gay or nun, has visibly
wanted to f**k him. This doesn't bode well for a balanced and healthy view of the opposite sex. As far as he is concerned woman are the causes of all of his problems. Every male friend he has made has fallen out with him over women. They have always objected to the attention he gets, especially from the women in their lives; as well as misunderstanding, more often than not, the fact that he is not grateful for what they see as a gift. And our man here can't see how it is his
fault, he doesn't demand the attention, nor does he enjoy it.

So he isn't half as fond of women as they seem to be of him. In fact he treats them with contempt and little else. But being a man and having urges and given that sex is on tap he does indulge. Most of us would like to have sex more often than we do; well, that isn't true of him. He has it whenever he feels like it, and generally it is good sex too. The kind of passionate clothes-ripping sex you only see in porn movies.
Most of us when we first get naked with a new partner are thinking about other things too, assessing them and wondering how we are standing up to scrutiny. But because these women are chemically turned on, aroused beyond reason they throw inhibitions aside and just get down and dirty. And our man doesn't care what they think, so he just responds with out thought. He has never been in love, nor does he expect to be: he is the truest misogynist in the country. So the sex is
frequent and good, but unfulfilling if you are after flowers and chocolates, or a cuddle by the sticky patch.

So his life for some 28 years is isolated but interspersed with activity Don Juan would have been proud of. There is no promise of change and although he understands life for him is different to that of other men he can't see any way to alter it, or any prospect of a different kind of relationship.

Until he meets my friend Beth. Nice lady Beth, I met her on a writing course several years ago. She was training to be a journalist and wanted to write for women's magazines. I told her about my friend, knowing how these rags love to talk about sex, I thought it might be a good angle. She was very excited and they arranged to meet. Now maybe I
should explain, I knew the effect this guy had on women, but I didn't know why at this point. I also didn't know how extreme it was so although I warned Beth I didn't seriously worry. She had been with her current partner for some years and showed no signs of waning in her affections for him, so I was sure she would be safe.

On the day they met I was out of town but called Beth in the evening to find out how it had gone. Her boyfriend sounded worried on the phone
and said he hadn't seen her but that he was sure she would turn up soon. Well she didn't, so later he called me back and I went around to his flat to find her. Sure enough there she is coming out of our man's flat looking ruffled but glowing. But when I asked her if she had called her partner she looked blank. I took her over to a caf? to sit
down, I wanted to sort her out before her boyfriend saw her and came to the same conclusion I had. But that was the weird thing; she didn't
mention her boyfriend. In fact when I did she showed no signs of remembering that she had a boyfriend at all. Now I have know women forget the love of their lives upon meeting our man, but generally only whilst with him. Beth couldn't remember having a boyfriend at all. I thought maybe it was a physiological block due to guilt thing. Blocking out the memory to prevent facing what she had done, but the more we talked the more upset she looked. She kept shaking her head and seemed to be more confused by what I was saying until in the end she was distraught and I had decided something was very wrong and advised her
to go to the hospital and see if she had suffered a blow to the head or a minor stroke.

I didn't hear from her for several days but when I next saw her she was no better. She had moved in with her mother and still couldn't recognise or remember her boyfriend. Not only could she not remember him, she had lost the recollection of any of her previous boyfriends or lovers either. It seemed that the only sexual experience she could
remember was the last one she had. Now Beth is a sensual woman and she has had a healthy amount of lovers in her life, so this gap in her memory was having a very disturbing effect on her. Without these points of reference through life, these experiences she felt bereft as a woman. To wake up age 32 with no memory of ever having been loved or
thought to be attractive is decimating to self-esteem and self-perception. As her only point of reference as a sexual being is our hero, she returns to him and repeats the whole sorry experience.
But this doesn't help; in fact it lowers her further into the fog she is under. But despite how hard she tries, and her family and I try to
prevent her she continues to go back to him.

Now you may be asking why not sleep with someone else, why not forge a new relationship, why not return to her boyfriend? Well at the same time something else strange has begun to come to light. Beth has begun to detect a change within herself. She is being flooded with memories of the new man in her life. Most noticeably when she is showering in the mornings, or undressing at night. She doesn't feel like herself at all, but she feels very aroused. After several days of crippling
longings she begins to notice a pattern of when it occurs. As it is always when she is naked and before washing, she finally makes the connection, She smells foreign to herself. She smells of him.
After a while is becomes noticeable to everyone else too. Not on a conscious level but never the less odd. Women are confused by her because she feels attractive but isn't a man, and men aren't attracted because she has a maleness to her they can't explain. So she is left with only one person to turn to, himself.

However careful she is the problem gets worse, every time she touches him the smell gets stronger until finally she is in total despair, the smell is so strong she is reminded of him on every in breath, and feels that her own identity is seeping away with her memories.
I try to help, but what can I do? I advise her not to see him but I know it is an addiction and there is nothing anyone can do to help. So in an act she feels sure is self-destruction, but a compulsion
nevertheless, she goes to him. And as they touch and she cries tears into his neck, their smells match in pitch. And on one intake of breath
she is overwhelmed; but not by loss; as his scent becomes her own she can no longer sense it. As none of us can smell our own odour. And in
that moment the spell is broken and all the memories of every man she has ever loved or been loved by come flooding back in. So overwhelmed
by it is she that she makes love to him as if he was the embodiment of every man she has ever cared for. He, being so unused to any emotion or caring from any woman since his mother, is cracked open by her loving and for the first feels love, falls in love. Abandoning his fortress for the open ground where she it is a fall of such speed and
inexperience that it threatens to break the ground he hits.
The waves of passion break and their skins part and he lies in shock on the sheets, she collects up her clothes and giving him a maternal touch
good bye leaves, whole again and no longer in need of him. And he, well he has at least been loved and felt love, if only for a moment.