Of course I love men all smeared in grime. Dirt and mud and engine oil. Hard labour produces sweat and smudges. Miners with coal-coated faces. Fire fighters with sooty streaks like badges of bravery and sacrifice. Great big monstrous hands rough and scarred and dirty from the earth he has shaped into new and shiny things. I don’t go in for trinkets and treasures, but I’d happily coo over any gift that he has wrought and riven from where the unstoppable earth meets his immovable body.
You love me? Well why not work out for a hundred years so you can climb into a volcano for me then? Because I’m nothing really, baby, merely an amped up romantic. There’s nothing mysterious about what works it for me. I just like to feel special. And I like to go to extremes. More, now, again. Higher, faster stronger. Bigger, harder, deeper.
My favourite flavour is more.
My heart is bruised like Rocky’s face on nothing more than the number of times it crashed into my own dumb intensity. I’m an idealist. And like all idealists – I never learn better. That’s the idealism deal.
But there’s nothing to see there. That’s not what I’m talking about. I want to talk about filth. Actual filth. Dirt. There is nothing so real as dirt. It’s the stuff the world is made of. Dirt. Filth. And not the filth of him. Much as I crumble into love-dust for his blood, sweat, tears and semen. The filth of me.
Of all the shameful over-exposing things I have ever said in this space of mine, here is one that even in my darkest moments I recoil from a little: I do not like to wash so much.
And if you want to leave now, you can, because that is where we are going today.
I do not own a shower, a fact I never really noticed until recently when people who slept in my bed apparently emerged from it so soiled they required more ablution than a bath could offer. So, yes, I have a bath, which I probably use with the frequency of the average Victorian.
Washing: it’s just all a bit wet and boring for your ultra-hedonic heroine.
I’ve always been this way. And, now that I have a job that doesn’t involve me leaving the house all that much and certainly doesn’t require a great deal of sitting with other victims in open plan formation in badly lit, badly air conditioned, modern hell, I am probably getting worse.
I love the acid taste of sweat on my fingers, the ever-popular musk in my armpits. (Last shaved: Valentine’s Day – but that was a whole weird episode by itself.) I really, really genuine love the the sweet sourness of the patch of skin under my boobs after a long day. Ah, god, did you ever think my desire to tell the truth would bring you this close to all the things that are wrong with me? Well, here you are.
My ever problematic hair looks better if it doesn’t get washed to much. Everyone’s skin is better from less products being rubbed all over them. I don’t want to show the dirty commie shades of my soul too much but there’s really no need to be buying all this perfumed crap. It’s just a body, there’s really no need to hide it completely in a kind of olfactory burka of unguents. Oh, and I don’t use deodorant. I just never have. Maybe I don’t sweat so much, but even with my casual attitude to washing it’s never seemed like something I needed.
And I don’t smell bad. I don’t smell like a floral vacuum like some people do, but I don’t smell any kind of nasty. Even by normal social definitions of nasty (- rather than my definitions of nasty – which are laxer than the norm.).
Really as unpleasant and taboo as this all sounds – you’d probably never really notice any of it if you met me. I don’t wash much and I don’t find the way my body is from not washing so much at all repellent. And despite this obvious deviance – you’d have to get very, very close to me before you could tell. Mind-reader close.
The only part of my body that sometimes has a dirtybadwrong smell that maybe would be defined as not okay, is my cunt. But the thing is, I love that smell most of all. I love the way my cunt smells more than I love the smell of a darkly sweaty man.
I’ve already said many times that I love the smell of piss. And I love, love, *love* the nostalgic high-romance of the combination of my blood and my cunt and blossoming red ghosts staining everywhere I’ve been. Look I’m not some kind of fertility culty pagan hippy or anything – I love modernity liek woah, I love shiny and chromic and rockets to the moon – but, I can’t help it if nothing touches my heart like seeing my insides coming flooding out of me and turning the world (or the bed sheets) the colour of passion.
I love the dirty centre of me. The sticky gloss that leaves silver snail-trails. (Which might sound gross but is a metaphor that hits in a way talk of honey or cream never does. It often looks to me like I’ve been walking around all day with a knicker-gusset filled with snails.) Sometimes it tastes sharp, sometimes sweet. It doesn’t smell like fish to me. It doesn’t smell like anything else in the world.
It smells like me. Like my best and favourite part. And I love it. I love that smell that is only mine and would rate it right up there with lavender and vanilla and coffee and rubber.
And the day after sex I smell different. Sometimes a little like rubber, for added perky kicks. Sometimes not. Mainly just harder, darker. Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
I just hate to wash that away too soon.
And I know what you’re thinking: Eurgh, Bitchy Jones, I used to think you were quite attractive because of all the filth you talked and I was happily ignoring the way you continually explained how ugly you are – but now, blee. You’re all skanky and shit. Well never fear. I do usually wash if I have a date. At least in the first blush/head rush early stages. After that, though, you’re on your own. Although, actually, I kind of hope that most people I get entangled with come around to my way of thinking.
And anyway, if you think that my attitude to washing is unsexy, just be glad I didn’t tell you how I feel about cleaning my teeth.
PS I am well aware that writing an essay like this with so much in about my actual physical body and its squicky-sensuality I am practically inviting some of my more creeptastic readers to be horribly brand-creepy in my ever popular unmoderated kick-me forum aka the comments.
Just pointing out now, that I knew you were going to do that.
29 Comments
May 6, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I would expect nothing less. Great post.
May 6, 2009 at 10:04 pm
’s only natural—you have impeccable taste—
May 6, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Hey, you…
I’m kind of similar, maybe for different reasons. I only shower in the evenings. I love waking up after a long nights sleep, maybe sex, and smelling properly like me – all masculine and Aarony and mmmmm.
As the day goes on, I smell more like me, and then in the evening, when I come to have sex, it’s at its peak, and my pants are full of pheromones. Rawrr.
And omg, have you read Wetlands, by Charlotte Roche? xxx
May 7, 2009 at 4:11 am
You do fabulous things with language. <3
May 7, 2009 at 6:01 am
Ah, I actually work with people who admit this quite freely. Average-to-good-looking, very sociable people. One of them recently explained to me how his natural hair grease is most excellent for styling his hair, and it only works when he doesn’t wash it. In fact, he finds it odd that people wash their hair and he doesn’t own shampoo. So, really, you are not as freaky as you might think you are in this regard.
May 7, 2009 at 7:49 am
Usually your descriptive writing turns me on.
This time it repulsed me.
Either way, it invoked a non-insignificant reaction from me, which is quite a compliment to your style.
May 7, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Nothing says I love you like a gunked up vagina. I knew this couple when I was living in Indonesia, they were bioth pretty skanky, (English teachers), and she definitely had a similar attitude to yours as far as personal hygine goes, I guess it just doesn’t translate so well on the equator because she stunk, although I don’t think she realised it. I don’t think I would be too keen on screwing someone quite so filthy and I would certainly think twice about putting my tongue in someones mouth if they didn’t brush their teeth very often, to each their own I guess. That old story about how you don’t need shampoo, how verty rasta, Its true that after a while the natural grease does have some cleansing attributes. Reminds me of my fathers dog, she hated being bathed and thought she smelt great even after rolling around in shit.
May 7, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I love my own private smell. It’s not too strong and certainly isn’t gunky. It’s sort of sweet, and lickable! And I was extremely upset when I contracted an infection and my smell changed. No other symptoms, but it was very distressing not to smell like myself. It has taken a good few months after the thing has gone away to get my proper fragrance back. I was worried for a while…
May 7, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Eugh. Romanticising filth has never been so unsexy.
May 7, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Nothing makes me happier than hearing other women espousing my own view (I fucking hate washing, and I have to for work). It’s a relief to hear someone who isn’t fetishising soaps and powders and chemical gloop, for once. Especially so bloody eloquently.
May 8, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I may have just got out of the shower (an everyday thing for me), but this post is gorgeous, on so many levels.
One of my partners showers twice a week, and I envy how amazing she smells.
May 8, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I just got out of the shower and read your post and now I just want to go out and roll around with someone manly..
May 8, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Absolutely respect your openness – sharing very intimate details with us via the interweb – kudos! But even with the amazing writing talent that you have, I cannot imagine anything remotely romantic or beautiful about this. For the first time ever reading this blog, I am physically-ill repulsed.
May 8, 2009 at 11:24 pm
You put into words what it’s like to be human, and that is more than OK to me.
May 9, 2009 at 4:46 am
Poly Styrene siad it so well in the “The Day The World Turned Day Glo”.
The sanitizing dehumanising products they throw at you in order for you to make them rich and stop each other smelling each others individual smells is criminal.I want a person to smell like themselves not the same as a million other people.
The individual perfume just for you but wanting to be sold in the millions.
Pussy perfume is the best smell in the world and when its a day or two old its lovely.
Don’t go a whole bundle for the breath though like that moderately clean.
Women are under a terrible tyranny of having to be “clean” and “feminine” with products euphamistically called feminie hygene products.How they could make you smell less feminine I don’t know except for maybe a female part of a flower or fruit.
Nice insight into using the menstres to make spirographs but can’t quite get that.
Smell you later.
May 10, 2009 at 7:34 am
Huh. I can’t quite share this additude, since I shower an awful lot, but I wasn’t expecting the huge amount of people that obviously don’t either! There are a lot of dirty people in the world…
But now that I think about it, I too kind of like that little smear on the inside of my panties. And I do enjoy the constant wet and swollen of my period. The ancients got it right when they’d make the girls quit working during their period and give them a tent all of their own. I hate tampons and pads, and wish I could just walk around naked, dripping blood into the straw.
May 10, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Whilst I am more of the shower-a-day n’ deodorant type, how can I turn up my nose to this? Well I suppose I could, as that would be the appropriate response. But you keep tilling that filthy soil and bringing up roses.
What I mean to say, after a lot of lurking, is “you’re fantastic.” Just to add my voice to the chorus, is all.
p.s. I’m with you there
May 10, 2009 at 5:26 pm
“there” being a continuation of the comment above, where I agree with the oh-wowness of my special bloody lady time. But seeing as I am a cavewoman who cannot use the internet, here we are.
Where are we?
May 11, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I’m honestly surprised at some of the negative responses you’ve received to this post. People would think you were talking about something a lot more scatalogical than body odour.
Personally, whilst I don’t mind my own smell, I have come to find the ritual nature of cleaning & grooming quite relaxing in and of itself, so am unlikely to give it up for any length of time. That said, the clean-up is always more fun when there’s more dirt to be gotten off, I find, so sometimes leaving it a little bit longer between ‘rituals’ makes them all the more enjoyable when they come along.
May 12, 2009 at 5:43 am
I don’t mind all the body dirt, but I shower a lot because I like showering. But I *love* the blood smell. I remember, and miss, the after-birth blood smells from my post partum weeks. Thanks for writing this.
May 15, 2009 at 12:45 am
I love both the after-sex musk and the ritual of cleaning it off. Sometimes, I like to get up and go about my day without cleaning off, so that later that night, while I wash off the sweat and everything else, it’s like a little reminder and affirmation of what happened the night before.
May 17, 2009 at 2:06 am
I like the smell of myself, but I hate when my hair is greasy. And I like sweat but not dirt. So I wash.
I also do most of my washing and perfumy and deodorant things because I know people won’t appreciate my smell. My mom always complains if I don’t wear deodorant.
I think sweaty doesn’t mean dirty. I would go for someone who didn’t shower all the time – as long as they were clean.
May 23, 2009 at 2:26 am
Mmmm. Yummy. I’m another one of these shower once or maybe twice a week people and I agree, the smell of one’s own sex is exquisite.
My partner is pretty much the same and after a weekend of indulgence has made the comment about being almost in need of hosing down by the firetruck… But a sexual human isn’t nearly so wiffy or repulsive as an overly perfumed cyborg wearing twelve layers of toxic chemicals.
May 24, 2009 at 7:52 am
I shower daily, because it feels so fucking great. But I do not use soap, I do not wash my hair, I rarely wear deoderant, and I refuse to put anything with an artificial scent in it on or near my body or my clothes. The “luxury” of bottles of expensive toxic crap designed to strip out your skin’s natural oils so you need to replace them with more expensive toxic crap is a luxury I am very happy to live without- especially considering that I am wildly allergic to ALL of that toxic crap, including and especially the more-expensive, more-luxurious “hypo-allergenic, all-natural” toxic crap.
Water + unscented, no-alcohol Vitamin E cream. That is my entire body maintenance array. People who reek of a dozen conflicting artificial perfumes freak me the fuck out. Give me a sweaty armpit or a pheremone-trapped cunt smell any day of the week.
May 27, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I found this post a little too intimate. Interesting response, given that I know this is a sex blog.
I can’t stand strong smells (whether synthetic or organic musk) on people I don’t know, so maybe that’s where my reaction is coming from…
June 1, 2009 at 7:34 am
I have to say I agree, generally I wash daily but sometimes I go for a few days without and it doesn’t make any real difference (except to hair)
June 4, 2009 at 12:06 am
Rereading this post, I just remembered something I read once about Napoleon. When he was returning from the latest campaign, he would send Josephine messages telling her not to wash for two days before he arrived, because he liked how she smelled.
June 17, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I admire that, must say I’m a little the same.
I wash when can smell myself, usually well before anyone else can or after a work out and stuff but otherwise I don’t use deodorant or any other crap.
To be fair it’s nice to see a woman who is happy about her own scent, quite liberating really.
November 9, 2009 at 4:32 am
Thank you for this! I shower every other day but when I’m on vacation I go several days between showers. My hair always looks better after a couple days without a shower. And I never wash my face with products, and guess what? I have the best skin out of anyone I know. I have never had a pimple in my life. I do feel gross after too many days of not showering, but as far as using product goes, I subsist on nothing but soap, shampoo, conditioner, and the occasional eyeliner. And I am not ashamed of it.