We forget how our senses enrich us. And the olfactory one is the most forgotten. Some smells bring us to the street of Paris and the musky gitons one finds there, or just the formaldehyde I as a hard-working physician get to waft on an almost daily basis. To me it is the strongest. Close your eyes, plug your ears, cleanse your throat with water, don’t touch anything: Smell will still be there.

Some people call us fragheads, as we meet periodically in a shopping center in Metro MNL while we exchange small vials as if they were drugs. But they are, in a sense. Free, legal drugs that transport us to the aforementioned Parisian gitons, a close physical examination with an attractive patient or just the balmy beaches of our beautiful country.

I must say that despite my manliness, I don’t see a distinction between “male” and “female” or “unisex” fragrances. A smell is a smell. Sometimes I’m sitting in my office in the hospital when because of a drop or two I’m transported to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest in Kyoto. 

I often prefer Opium by YSL or many of Chanel’s dainty offerings. But yes, sometimes I prefer the particular musk of a stevedore from the Port of Manila. That combination of masculine pheromones, tropical manliness and sweat can be unbeatable. Unfortunately, those smells must be consumed in place. I get too carried away to actually bottle them.