Season to Taste (14 page)

After all, scientist George Preti published a study in 2003 showing that the smell of male sweat, too, can influence a woman’s reproductive clock. In this study, a group of women in the first seven days of their cycle were given samples of male sweat, inhaled from the top of their lips every two hours. Another group of women received samples that were blank. After six hours, their conditions were reversed. The scientists, who took small amounts of blood from each participant every ten minutes, found that the women who smelled male sweat experienced a precipitous increase in a certain type of hormone—the luteinizing hormone—which regularly spikes in level just before ovulation. For them, it spiked at a 20 percent increase compared with the women smelling nothing. In 2007, Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, in a study exploring the impact of ovulation on the tips earned by female dancers in strip clubs over two months, found that on average the most fertile dancers (the ones who were ovulating) earned $35 an hour more than those menstruating, and $20 more per hour than the others. Women on birth control earned significantly less overall, with no cyclic peaks.

So it does seem that there are invisible signals sent out and received by humans—ones that make changes, changes so silent it’s possible to not even know they are happening. Changes that relate to fertility and growing new life, which, in their successes and failures, are quite dependent on the other humans involved.

But how does it work? What exactly is causing the change? If pheromones can influence a woman’s menstrual cycle, does that mean they can influence other things? Do humans fall under the same categories as animals? Can I signal danger to my friends with my sweat? Did David kiss me because I unknowingly released something potent and primal from the follicles of my skin?

No one really knows.

“Despite what is advertised on various web-sites, and even suggested in certain scientific, peer-reviewed publications,” wrote scientists Charles Wysocki and George Preti in a 2009 paper, entitled “What’s Purported, What’s Supported,” for the Sense of Smell Institute, “there are no published, scientifically-constructed, bioassay-guided studies that have lead [
sic
] investigators through the complex maze of compounds found on the human body to one or more elements that possess pheromonal activity.”

The effects of pheromones in animals have been catalogued and categorized. They are often compared to the actions and reactions of humans, and many have attempted to find overlaps. Most, however, are hotly debated. As Tristram Wyatt, author of
Pheromones and Animal Behavior,
wrote in a 2009 essay (“Fifty Years of Pheromones”) for
Nature,
“Controversy over mammalian pheromones has been almost as heated as the ‘stink wars’ between opposing troops of ring-tailed lemurs.”

“Primer” pheromones are for the long term, like those studied by McClintock. They influence the body slowly, touching things like the rise and fall of hormone levels and the onset of puberty. “Releaser” pheromones are quick, eliciting immediate reactions like the flight of the upwind flight of male moths or the reaction of a male boar to a female in heat. This is murky water for humans. It may seem like the lightning flash of chemicals when two young lovers lock eyes at a party for the first time, but the only documented release behavior in humans as of yet is among babies, who react innately and actively when moving their heads toward their mother’s breasts. “Modulators” are responsible for subtly changing emotions and moods and were introduced by McClintock’s lab in 2000. Here, especially, little is known, but in Preti’s 2003 study he also found that the group of women who had samples of male sweat presented on the top of their lip for a block of six hours claimed to feel calmer and more relaxed than when their lips were unadorned. “Signalers” give information: in animals, who is dangerous, who is my kin, who is healthy around me. Controversial in humans, it has been shown that mothers and babies can recognize each other by smell alone on day one—but this is based on definable scent, not on hidden chemicals, and begs the question: How wide does one stretch the definition of pheromones?

Unlike animals, humans do not have active vomeronasal organs. A ghost of the pathway exists, extending from the roof of the mouth back toward the brain, but there is nothing functional within. This hasn’t always been true: in the beginning stages of growth, human fetuses have been shown to possess an actively developing VNO. The volatile sensory nerve, however, disappears before birth. Perhaps thousands of years ago—before we developed tricolor vision, before we had language and emotion and still had to communicate so silently, chemically—it worked. But no longer.

The question remains, then: Can humans detect these chemicals through the traditional olfactory pathway? Like much having to do with pheromones, it’s not yet clear.

There are those, like smell psychologist Rachel Herz, who have alternative ideas. In her 2007 book,
The Scent of Desire,
she proposes a theory: pheromones, she says, are passed through the skin. McClintock’s female dorm mates synchronized because of touch, she hypothesized: “My explanation appeals to parsimony because it requires no ‘smell’ and obviates the problem of our not having a VNO or accessory olfactory system.”

Richard Doty, director of the Taste and Smell Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is a leading skeptic. In his 2010 book,
The Great Pheromone Myth,
he argues that pheromones, by definition, do not exist in humans: “ . . . evidence for the existence of human pheromones is weak on empirical, conceptual and methodological grounds,” he writes. “While odors and fragrances, like music and lighting, can alter mood states and physiological arousal, it is debatable whether agents purported to be pheromones
uniquely
alter such states.”

But we do react to each other, in ways that can only be described as pheromonic. And for me, in those first months in New York, I wondered: Would I miss important, intrinsic relationship cues without my sense of smell? Would I lose my ability to feel close to my partner? To my family? Had I lost the ability to recognize my own children when, someday, I had them? Would I lose my sexuality without smell?

Luca Turin, a scientist, smell expert, and author of
The Secret of Scent,
writes: “Imagine you lose your sense of smell, just like when you had that bad cold five years ago, but this time, as occasionally happens, it never comes back. Food would become unutterably boring: you might as well join Weight Watchers, eat textured mushrooms and feel good about your bum. But sex would still be OK, because your eyes, hands and ears (‘I love it when . . .’) would still work. I rest my case.”

I wasn’t sure he was right.

DAVID AND I
dated that balmy, sun-soaked summer.

He had been a resident of New York for years and introduced me to many of the city’s pleasures. We met at the Museum of Modern Art after work on a Friday and walked among its cavernous white-walled rooms. After a month of interning, I had been promoted to editorial assistant at that fine art magazine—“one of the only art history majors to get a job in the field,” my father had laughed—and I enjoyed rambling on about Warhol and Redon, Nauman and Gorky. We spent evenings in Prospect Park, where we picnicked with wine, bread, and cheese as darkness descended. We went to movies at the Sunshine Theater on the Lower East Side and ate burgers at the bar near his apartment. We watched DVDs lying enmeshed on his couch, cooked dinner in his otherwise underused kitchen, and read in coffee shops on a Sunday morning.

And we slept together—comfortable, exciting nights in which our bodies fit so well together and apart. He traced the line of my still-red scar, which ran down the side of my left leg, softly with his index finger. I loved waking up with his arms around me.
Hey,
I thought to myself every so often,
maybe I don’t need smell
. After all, I didn’t need his.

There were some downsides to spending time with David: he called only when he wanted and never held my hand. I often felt young, too young. I wanted him to be both a mentor and a lover. We were casual, though my feelings grew stronger every day.

My job, too, began to overtake my time. I spent long days in the office, under the guidance of an intense though talented editor. I learned more than I could even hold on to each day, and therefore I also learned how to scramble. I learned to fact-check, to mark my corrections on raw magazine copy with a bright red pencil, to broker between writers and editors, and to smile quietly amid the hectic battle of deadline and production. I began to grow a thick skin. I fell in love with the possibility of words.

I worked in an office close to Bryant Park, where the onset of summer brought crowds of bare-legged women and a scentless explosion of flowers. As June melted into July, I didn’t notice the stench of subway stations filled with rotting trash and sweating people. I didn’t notice the fragrance of concrete sidewalks baking in the sun or the carts selling rich-smelling meats on top.

There was a change, though. A small change, almost too subtle to notice, but succulent nonetheless. I walked outside my apartment one hazy summer afternoon, inhaled and exhaled, and noticed
something
. Something different. A change. A smell.
No, not a smell,
I thought. This couldn’t be so defined. It was a change in the periphery of my breath, a noted shift in perception, but indescribable and indefinable all the same. It was more of an idea of a smell, an aura of scent.

As the weeks went by, I noticed this frequently—just a general sense of smell. I would walk from room to room in my apartment or office and note the vague alteration of aroma every day. Each time, I would turn to whoever was nearby and say, “What does it smell like in here?” He or she would often look confused, sniff, and say: “I don’t know. Nothing much.” I had forgotten that smells were everywhere. In every room, on every street, hovering above every person I knew. These auras were more painful than happy, though, remaining in their vaporous brevity unattainable and untouchable still, like the contrast of the grays in the black-and-white movie of my life had simply deepened their hue. There was no color. I wondered if I was simply making it up.

David and I saw each other, but less and less. Five months in, we didn’t argue. There were no fights. We had hardly met each other’s friends, and I knew we were both holding back. Sometimes he would disappear for days without a word. Sometimes I wondered if he was seeing someone else. I couldn’t bring myself to confront him, though. It felt good when we were together. Losing my sense of smell didn’t affect that.
I’m not wholly broken,
I would think with a smile. Until I met him I was afraid my heart would never flop giddily, butterflies would never flutter in the pit of my stomach, the light touch of a hand on my arm would never make me smile in such a way. I was afraid that I would never want someone to take off my clothes or run his fingers over my collarbone again. David proved me wrong. I loved the feel of his hand on my cheek.

“I wear cologne,” David said one morning in late September as he splayed out next to me in his bed. “I have for years.” His arms arched upward, hands resting under that cloud of curly brown hair. Turning his head so that his face rested on the white pillow, he looked at me. “It’s so strange that you don’t know that.”

There was the hum of an air conditioner, the warmth of his leg against mine, and the rasp of foot against the sheets. I tried to smile, breathing in deeply through my nose. There was nothing.

“You wear cologne?” I asked, hesitantly. “Really?”

“I do,” he said. “Well, aftershave. Every day.”

“What kind?”

“
Cool Water.
”

He looked at me and I turned my head away to stare at the wall. It was a milky off-white, with ripples of plaster visible just beneath the paint.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, suddenly unable to hold back tears.

I used to know men who wore scent. Even on first introductions, one whiff of a Jean-Paul Gaultier, an Armani, or a Ralph Lauren, and I knew something about them. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Alex, I recalled, wore a Hugo Boss cologne in the latter years of high school, which I had loved. But it was
something
. Something telling. Wearing cologne says something about a man in his early thirties. It says something different than the raw, human scent of skin and soap. It wasn’t what I expected.

I don’t really know him,
I thought.

EVERY HUMAN HAS A SMELL.
A unique smell. A smell shared with no one else.

This smell has nothing to do with what brand of deodorant or laundry detergent one chooses to use. It has nothing to do with perfume or shampoo or soap. It has nothing to do with how hard one pushed at the gym or how long it’s been since the last shower. It has nothing to do with the existence of the vomeronasal organ.

This is a specific odor, a naked odor. This is the familiar smell of a boyfriend’s T-shirt, a wife’s bathrobe, a child’s hair. It’s the armpit smell, the neck smell, the smell of skin. It depends partly on diet and partly on bacteria, and therefore can change with location and culture. But mainly it has to do with genetics.

I first heard about this unique odor print at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. I sat in a conference room in the center, a light and airy room on the second floor, and spoke with Charles Wysocki, a leading researcher on the chemical senses and communication in both humans and animals. He began by telling me about a set of genes that regulates the immune system. It’s called the
major histocompatibility complex,
or MHC. These genes also dictate a scent, one that is different for every person, overlapping solely for identical twins. Like the spiral patterns on the tip of the index finger, we each possess a unique odor print.

At one point in his career, Wysocki told me, he classified the scent determined by MHC as a pheromone. After all, it fit under the definition: it provides information to other member of the species. But, he explained, “I tend now to think that it might not be a pheromone, because it represents a mixture of potentially hundreds of compounds, and is going to be different across different individuals.”