Help for fic: Trouble with descriptions...

[slumber]

Uh... how do men smell/taste like? Anything that would concretize the picture? I'm having a bit of trouble not romanticizing the descriptions... I'm stuck with mint and honey and cinnamon and musk. Gah!! Help!!! Must finish this by Valentine's!!!

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Depends on the guy, of course, but going by my memory:

soap
smoke (cigarette or other)
sweet orange juice and whiskey
clean laundry
sweat
salt
chlorine
leather
toothpaste
sand
grass
The various scents of aftershave and cologne, which tend to the sandalwood/pine, musky, or else sea/clean families.

In other words, clean men smell mostly like what's around them -- their various scented products, their clothes, their food, the things they do and the places they spend time. Skin does have a scent of its own, and its different for each person (my most recent ex-boyfriend's skin was my favorite scent in the world) but I wouldn't know how to describe it except by saying *their* scent. And even still it's probably largely their particular mix of all of the above, like a custom blend of snuff. And a twist of pheramones thrown in.

I've *never* met a guy who smelled like cinnamon or honey, though I guess if he was a cook.

Mer

Re:

[isilya]

I love your list, and it ties in with something I was reading about how our forebears are most emotionally connected to natural smells; baking, cut grass, manure, while we as a generation react most to chemical scents; chlorine, cologne, toothpaste, petrol.

Re:

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I think it's partly associational. I've smelled manure maybe twice in my life, I've got nothing much to connect it to. Petrol brings back vivid sense memories of childhood, being crammed into the way back of a station wagon full of kids. That said, I still react to cut grass and baking.

Re:

[isilya]

Chlorine is one of my strongest punch-in-the-face smells. There's nothing like a whiff of chlorine to take me back ten years in a second.

Re:

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Heh. Were you a swim team kid too, by any chance? Chlorine itself doesn't do much for me, but drying clorine on sun-warmed skin... yeah.