Do I Stink?

It was another ordinary Thursday in the Spring of 2009.

Or so I thought.

Well, for the most part my Thursday was ordinary... until I bumped into Desmond.

I got off of the bus that day to find my former classmate standing a few feet in front of me.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said back.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked.

Of course I didn't mind being asked a question, but I don't think I really had a choice anyway. Before I even had the chance to mentally approve his question, Desmond dove right into what turned my ordinary day into an unordinary one:

"This is gonna sound really weird... but do I stink?"

If the moment he asked me that question was in a movie, the corresponding background audio would have been either car tires screeching or a scowling cat falling into a trash bin.

There I was, standing in front of a lean-physiqued, perfectly gel-spiked haired, light eyed, decently dressed, relatively attractive-looking guy, who had decided to ask me, of all people, if he was stinky.

"Oh well..." I thought to myself.

At that point I figured the best thing to do would be to demonstrate concern. I turned towards him, heaved a huge amount of the odorless oxygen surrounding him into my lungs, and assured him he smelled fine.

Desmond wasn't convinced with my verdict and went so far as to suggest that perhaps my sense of smell was flawed or that maybe I had not smelled correctly.

Was there a proper way to smell a guy for odor? He was obviously hinting that I should smell him closer.

It was a bit odd, but I leaned in so that I was about one to two inches away from Desmond's left sleeve and took a sniff. I smelled nothing and reassured him that he didn't stink.

Really though, he didn't stink.

Despite my odor-check, I saw Desmond pick up the collar of his shirt and smell it to double-check for any foul scent anyway.