Ok, so there was no seque, but damned if I didn’t reread a couple times looking for one.
Is it possible that he’s bathing, but not using soap? Sometimes that’ll do it. You can take all the showers you want, but if you’re not actually washing yourself, what good will it do?
How is it that some people cannot smell themselves? Just curious.
Since I’ve started working out at the workplace gym, I’ve come to realize just how rank and musty the guys can get. I don’t mean that a gal couldn’t reek, but I honestly don’t notice a strong stench coming from the women even when they’re sweaty.
What is it about the body chemistry?
I know that smokers have a greatly reduced sense of smell.
When I go out of town on business, I collect the little bottles of soap and shampoo. I use my own conditioner and soap. When I’ve got a good sized bag of mini soaps and such, I donate them to the local homeless shelter. I learned the trick from a flight attendant friend of mine.
She said that a lot of her fellow attendants do the same thing.
Sorry I can’t answer the rest of the mystery though. Maybe he was showering at the gym?
If it’s really that intense, I’d confront him directly about it. And if that threatened my job, I’d write an anonymous letter.
I hate to admit that you’d be right. I don’t like stereotypes, but I can’t deny that.
I work with an italian guy that must drink five pots of coffee a day and smoke 2 packs of cigarettes while hes doing it. It gives him an aura of smokey-coffee grinds funk. On a hot summer day it can be pretty damned powerful. I think it melted my dogtags once.
One of my classmates in college had two room-mates who went well beyond (beneath?) your nephew’s roomie. The two individuals in question didn’t bother to bathe, nor did they bother to clean their flatware, dishes, or pots and pans. Odd thing, though, is that they did re-use the aforementioned funkified items. I think it’s a miracle that anyone could survive that.
I recall the one and only time I visited my friend in that apartment. I think my nose wanted to sue my feet for walking into the place.
The Smother Brothers?
Well, you don’t smell things that you get used to. Like how people whose houses reek of cat don’t smell it anymore. If what you get used to is “you”, I’m sure you wouldn’t smell a thing. I’m sure people who lived in smelly parts of history thought it normal as well.
I’d rather endure the stench of rank and musty guys at my gym, than that of all the women on weird diets with their silent-but-deadly effluvia, which they release in the mistaken thought that no-one will know it was them.
Oh, we know. Paint peeling from the walls, asthmatics needing resuscitation, and small children crying and running for their mommies – all leading back to Ground Zero on the elliptical, who is busy trying to look innocent while fanning herself with her People magazine.
The rankness and mustiness from sweat, that I expect. Butt-bombs is well beyond the Pale, though.
Like many here, I have my own tale to tell -
I live in Richmond, VA, which during the summer can be like living in a steam bath. The air will get so thick and heavy with humidity that it feels like being wrapped in wet wool. Just walking from your car to the office will get you wringing wet with sweat. The type of sweat that runs down between your shoulder blades and soaks through your shirt. The type of sweat that clings to you because there is so much moisture in the air that it has no chance to evaporate.
Imagine, then, the co-worker I had who liked to brag that she had the lowest water bill in the city. Brenda was an extremely overweight black woman who worked the phones at a former place of employment. As was the style at the time (god, I sound like Abe Simpson), she wore her hair in this intricate swirling, curled, highly coiffed style that must have been held in place with several pounds of pommade and several cans of hairspray. Being so intricate, it kept her from washing her hair regularly. Imagine a meringue of steel wool liberally sprinkled with talcum powder and coated in vaseline and you’ll get the impression of this woman’s dandruff encrusted noggin. Add to that the heat, humidity, and her reluctance to bathe and you have a olfactory disaster waiting to happen.
The miasma that followed the woman around was gut wrenching. Unwashed hair and hair products, oppresive sweat smell, topped off with some sort of cheap perfume that was cloyingly sweet. You could actually taste the odor if you happened to get trapped behind her. I once saw an elevator full of people get off rather than ride up with her.
To top it off, I once answered the telephone and it was a gentleman calling for Brenda. It was the Friday before a long holiday weekend and he had obviously gotten an early start from the slurring. When I told him she wasn’t around, he said, “Well tell her that I’m home…we’re going to get together and make us some love.” The thought of her rolling around in the sweltering summer heat, all sweaty and …dewy…made me want to poke my mind’s eye out with a sharp stick.