Cyrano Had It Easy (a.k.a. The Story of My Nose Part Deux)

My nose is finicky. It’s as mature as a hungry, sleepy, bored five-year-old child. If it smells something that is less than lemony-fresh it has a temper tantrum, forcing me to evacuate and find an odour free area where I can put it in a time out.

My nose is also runny 365 days a year, and my sneeze rate is about two to three sneezes per hour. I live in a state of permanent hay fever.

Summer is usually the worst time of year smell-wise. It is the season where heated garbage cans give off the sweet scents of cooked mould. I can’t even find a safe haven in air conditioned malls - the over chilled air gives me a runny nose.

I don’t know why my nose is so rough on me. Maybe it’s because I sucked at dodge ball. Since the second grade, my nose has never felt safe in a gym.

So my snout has forced me to make some lifestyle adjustments, this kind of disability is an uphill battle. Basically, I must make sure I always have an unusually large supply of Kleenex at my disposal at all times. I also have to pay close attention to which pocket is for used hankies, and which is for the fresh kind (disposal facilities aren’t always at ones finger tips). Also, I avoid restaurants that I know will make my clothes stinky, and I try to weasel out of cooking anything fried or anything with Cajun spices.

This strange evaluation of my nostrils comes from a malodorous accident I had this weekend. I was driving my friend and myself to a BYOB home-style bachelorette party. Because of leg room concerns, we thought it would be a good idea to put the alcohol she was bringing in the trunk - believe it or not we are both university educated. I took a few turns without problems, heard only a little shuffling, and then suddenly, as I am taking our exit, “CRUNCH.” Perfect.

I stopped the car and discovered that the bottle of gin had survived (thank god) but not the bottle of rum. Not the spiced rum. The spiced part adds a sweeter, spicier layer to the rum, making for an almost sticky smell. Captain Morgan will now haunt me forever.

We tried to soak up as much of the liquor, as we could with our one Kleenex. I had recently had a sneezing fit, emptying the box, and failing my nose once again. We did what we could with what we had and drove the rest of the way with the windows down, gagging ungracefully.

At the end of the evening, we returned to a car that smelled like drunk. Not just regular drunk – smelly homeless drunk.

After having driven home with my head sticking out the window, doggy style, I removed the bottom part of my trunk and stuck it in the shower to hose it off. Then, I doused it with Febreze, the fabric refreshner and odour remover. I sincerely thought that would solve the problem. I envisioned the moment where my nose and I would make up.

However, when I returned to my car the next day, it smelt like bar. Which I suppose is a step up from smelly drunk bum. I had taken care of the source of stink the night before, but the fumes from the spilt drink had permeated the plastic inner walls of my car. So I doused the entire vehicle with two thirds of a bottle of Febreze. Finally it smelt morning spring fresh. My nose stopped making my eyes tear: it was pleased.

The next morning, I woke up inhumanly early for an early class. I entered the chilly car and put my key into the ignition. If a nose had vocal cords, my nose would have shrieked. The Febreze and rum had melded into one super smell, creating a strange smoky, mouldy medicine cabinet aroma. My appendage stuck itself in the air in disapproval, sneezes ensued.

For one week I’ve been sticking to a strict regimen of a quarter bottle of Febreze, twice a day. Things have gotten a little better. The car is now getting to smell more like my dad’s liquor cabinet instead of a mutant medicine cabinet.

However, I haven’t quite patched things up with my nose, it’s still a bit resentful for the whole ordeal, and so my sneezing rate is still a bit above average. But I think we’ll make it through this.

If I had any advice for someone with special nose needs, it’s that it’s important to be nice to your nose. Maybe name it, give it something nice to smell from time to time. Or else it might just gang up with various other body parts and start a rebellion.

The Metaphorical Haircut

I have a special relationship with my nose. I have year-round allergies forcing me to carry a lifetime supply of Kleenex everywhere I go. My nose is also very sensitive to smells: smoke, perfumes, exotic foods, anything a bit out of the ordinary displeases it. When upset, my nose invariably crunches itself up and makes my eyes tear. On top of it all, it came with a small defect: a little bump on its bridge. So, on my last family vacation I thought I’d trade it in and get a new one. Apparently that’s not how it works when you get a nose job.

Not only do I have a very special finicky nose, I have a very special family. My entire family is from Curitiba, a large city in the south of the Brazil. My mother and father moved to Canada while I was still in the womb. Now, the three of us live here amid the igloos and caribou. Still, I am lucky enough to have my Canuck life interspersed with annual visits to the land of bikinis and sequins. Now, why is my family special? Well, you may have heard the statistic that Brazil is the country with the highest cosmetic surgery procedures per capita. I’d like to think my family has a direct hand in this. All of the men in my family are plastic surgeons; my uncles, my grandfather and my cousins all wield a scalpel. Actually not all, I have a cousin who is a pediatrician – he’s a bit skittish, you see.

I remember the first day of the last trip my old nose would ever make. After 24 hours spent in airports and airplanes, I climbed in an elevator with my grandfather, looking forward to a shower followed by an endless flow of aunts looking for an opportunity to pinch my cheeks over a cup of tea and some cookies.

“You know we can fix that,” my grandfather said pointing to somewhere between my eyebrows. Luckily, the elevator doors opened, leading the way out of an awkward and slightly insulting conversation.

I was always fully aware of the smallish speed bump resting on the bridge of my nose. I never liked it and often wished it disappeared. But I resigned myself to live with it right around the age of fourteen. At nineteen, I was confident enough, except for the reoccurring “I-wish-I-looked-like-Gisele-Bunchen” syndrome every woman experiences when browsing through a Victoria Secret catalogue.

Besides, surgery seemed so excessive. It was only a little bump, it didn’t do anything wrong. I also wondered if I was the surgery kind of person. I’ve always associated plastic surgery with over-the-top women like Joan Rivers - women who, if they winked, I swear to God, their toes would wiggle. But then, I imagined how my nose would look sans bump. And oh, how wonderful it would be.

Due to living in the land of cosmetic surgery, more than 80 per cent of my family has had some kind of plastic surgery done. Face lifts, tummy tucks, lipo, I suspect one chin implant, and a few dozen nose jobs. Turns out my nose bump is genetic.

I was told that if I were to go ahead with the surgery, the procedure itself would only be about an hour long: I’d go into the clinic in the morning, and I’d be home for dinner. I’d wear some nose bandages for about a week, and then I’d be free and pretty. My cousin compared it to a hair cut, “Why wouldn’t you get a good haircut if you could?” These are the words of wisdom that drove me to the operating table.

So I did it, and it wasn’t pleasant. A combination of anesthetics and loss of nose function made me feel like I had the flu. Once the bandages were off, I still didn’t look too great. There was some bruising and swelling, it took me a few more weeks to see what I’d look like for the rest of my life. Turns out I still looked like me but with a less bumpy nose. I felt as different as if I had taken a good shower; I looked the same, but I guess I felt a bit more put together.

When I returned to North America, few people noticed the change. Of course, I told all my friends, and if the subject comes up with new acquaintances, I don’t hide. I’m always amused by the shocked expression on people’s faces once they discover that my nose was tweaked with. Once, someone actually said, “What? You? But you’re so nice!” I visited a society where plastic surgery is normal; it’s a part of maintaining your appearance. In Canada you get haircuts, in Brazil you get tummy tucks. I don’t regret my decision, and am pleased with the results. I will not be going under the knife any time soon. I want to keep the essence of what I look like as is. Ok, maybe a haircut… but never a perm.

One more thing: I thought you’d like to know that giving my nose a metaphorical haircut hasn’t changed our relationship. I still sneeze and hate unfamiliar smells. Ungrateful schnoz.

Love, Peace and Soul

I got a record player for my birthday.

I wanted one because I missed the pops and skips I got used to. For the longest time I thought Obla Di Obla Da was a dirty song and I had inherited a cleaned up version.

Desmond says to Molly - girl I like your face, and Molly says this as she takes him by the POP

I thought the pop was the CRTC hard at work.

I also had this great Tarzan story book. But I didn’t think Tarzan had a swearing streak, instead he had the hiccups. The TV and movie remakes were never the same without the hiccups.

Reminiscing out loud about the popping, and the endless undertaking of cleaning freakishly persistent dust particles off shiny vinyl with a little velvet brick, led my better half to buy me a record player.

So there I was, flipping through some musty old records, in a musty old used record store with questionable architecture, with my good friend Cornelius.

Yes.

Cornelius.

And no, his parents did not have the decency to name him after some illustrious ancient Roman thinker. Instead, they kindly named him after Don Cornelius. The first host of Soul Train.

But fear not for Cornelius, despite the awkward teenage years (though not more or less awkward from the rest of us), and the complete loss of irony he experienced during Fight Club when Edward Norton wore the “Hello my name is Cornelius” name tag at the testicular cancer support group, he would lead a very fulfilling life.

So there we stood in between the bargain bin and the soundtrack section where he had just finished questioning the merits of whose moustache was more distinguished, Sonny Bono or Freddie Mercury.

(I was partial to Sunny’s.)

“What’s with your need to return to the olden days?” he said as he mimicked putting an invisible needle on an invisible record, frowning, then moving the needle, frowning some more, then moving the needle again.

Cornelius claims he was a mime in another lifetime.

“I need to find the pop back in Obla Di Obla Da. My ears miss the pop.”

My ears also happened to miss the sound of the Full House theme song, however I chose not to volunteer that bit of information.

After finding the White Album and wondering whether I could manually replicate the same scratch as my old copy, Cornelius turned around and asked me, “You really shouldn’t be enjoying returning back to the Stone Age this much. You don’t need to crank the phonograph anymore,” he said while cranking an invisible crank, “I’ll introduce you to electricity.”

“Darwin had it all wrong,” I said, “Devolution is where the party is actually at. That’s why we’re obsessed with youth. That’s why nostalgia is so nostalgic. Most of us idealise our childhood, and the younger the better. We want our wombs back. No, even that isn’t enough. We want to be sperm.”

“Sperm?” he said as he made a little fish slither gesture with his right hand.

“Yes. And there’s proof in nature: snakes evolved – or should I say DEvolved – from lizards. They started out with legs, and now look at them: sperm with tongues. In evolution, you acquire legs to better run around, but snakes knew what they were doing: they were devolving back into the womb.”

“What’s next? Egg snakes?”

“Egg snakes,” I said gravely nodding my head.

Back at home, I crawled onto the sofa and listened to Obla Di Obla Da. But it had a different skip, all its own.

It wasn’t terrible, but I bet it doesn’t beat being a sperm. Or so I hear.