Scent Memories and Personal Stories

That's a really intense smell of

cheap perfume and urine.

Um-

Hi, I'm Dakota.

And I'm Alexander.

And this is Five Questions with The Cut.

Go on.

Sausage factory. Um,

bear with me. Bear with me. I grew up next to a sausage factory,

so every morning when I walked out the door of my apartment

building on the way to

s- on, on the way to school, I was hit with the scent of,

um, not sausages. I love that I'm talking about sausage factories.

It's weird, because I was gonna say my memory is Sausage Fest.

Oh, really?

But smells way different.

Anyway, I was around s- eight, nine, 10 maybe, uh-

And we're still going. My scent memory, my mom always

burned nag champa incense in the house growing up, and

also just the smell of, the smell of failure.

Prominent-

Yeah

... in your house.

I love gasoline. I love bleach.

I love matches.

I love bug spray.

Arson. Just a general fan of arson.

Am I okay? I love gasoline, match.

Yeah.

I love that smell.

Uh, well, obviously number one,

um, low-quality sausage factory. Low, low, low grade.

Number two, moldy wallpaper,

'cause

my childhood, our country house was, uh, d-

dilapidated, old house, and,

uh, we've had it in the family for 100 years,

and Dad

was very nostalgic, and still is, about the house,

and didn't wanna change the

wallpaper because it was, like, his great-grandfather's.

So it was, like, peeling off the walls.

I remember as a kid,

going to bed,

um, probably full of asbestos as well, the smell of that moldy,

sweet smell of moldy wallpaper. What about, like, saltwater on

skin in the sun?

I like that very much.

Yeah.

A piña colada.

A Corona.

Yeah. Some gasoline, a match.

Some gasoline, a match.

Sausage factory, and obviously Valentina Vendetta.

Feet,

cheese,

skunk. I got sprayed by a skunk in my bedroom

once, and then I had

to get on a plane.

And it went through the floorboards, and then to you.

Yes, into the walls, into my closet, and I land in New York, and I get to the

hotel, and I open my suitcase, and then the hotel smelled like skunk.

Did I keep that within 120 seconds or-

Yeah.

Okay, a bit longer. Sorry about it.

That was wild.

You can edit it a little bit.