ฝรั่งเหม็น (Smelly Foreigner)

After I ate dinner and returned to my guest house last night, I had an idea.  I am staying in an area with a fair number of bars, and I have not had a drop of alcohol during my entire trip.  So it crossed my mind that perhaps I should venture out to one of the bars nearby and have a drink or two.  Nothing excessive, but something to relax a bit before I went to bed. 

Instead, I stayed home.  I’m a very introverted person, but I still like to interact socially at least some of time.  But I decided not to go out because of a very simple, though aggravating reason.  As I mentioned, yesterday the temperature reached 34 C, which means I sweated like a cow at a Texas barbeque.  It was bad enough that the sleeves of my over-shirt turned a little brown, and I’m sure I smelled something akin to a war crime.  Trust me, it’s a lovely picture. 

Many of my friends know that I have hyposmia, meaning that I have a reduced capacity to detect smells.  If something next to me is on fire or someone douses themselves in perfume or cologne, I can smell it.  But outside that and a few other examples, odors are a mystery to me.  I’ve never really known how they work on an experiential level.  If I, something in my room, or some of my clothes have a rank odor, I’m none the wiser.  It’s led to some funny instances, like the time my frat brother Ben saved me from a few days on toilet by pointing out the meat I was about to eat was on the wrong side of spoiled. 

But it also makes me paranoid as hell about my own odor.  Add that with a propensity to sweat oceans anytime the temperature reaches above 72 F, and you have my hatred of summer.  Usually, I just stay inside or if I have to go out somewhere, I take my car and blast the AC to create my own little arctic nest.  And if I think I am a bit smelly, I spray my clothes with Febreeze and let that magical concoction do its thing.  But I don’t have a car in Thailand and I forgot my Febreeze in Wisconsin, so when I want food, decent internet connection, or anything else, I walk.  In the heat.  Sweating up a storm.  I tried to remedy the situation by buying some spray deodorant to cover any smell from my clothes, but since I can’t tell how much I should use, I thought it would probably just the bad smell with something else that was too strong to be pleasant. 

So the reason I am not going out tonight is that I’m sure I’m a rank mess, and I’d rather not oppress other people in a cramped space with my BO.  Just imagine a large, hairy, smelly, sweat stained foreigner hanging out at a chic Chiang Mai bar.  It’s not an image I’d like to make a reality.