other peoples' perfume

I always thought that I was sensitive to smells, but only since I started trying to make sense of perfume (a sad number of which are still stuck in the purgatory of "something in this makes my throat hurt") have I started noticing that other people wear perfume. I suppose until now I classified perfume smell as part of the general cloud of laundry detergent/shampoo/lotion/body funk that most people haul around, and not as a deliberate, extra thing. I am smelling a lot of fruity florals, recently, and the occasional wash of coconut - the route I take to get to the bus home takes me past a lot of people from greek life headed to formal dinners, so there are a lot of girls in strappy heels who smell like jasmine and plum. There is one very put-together student, though, who wears a Goddamn Chypre, and you can tell that she probably calls it a Goddamn Chypre when she puts it on.

It interests me that I had this whole sense just sitting around unused, and now that I'm paying attention it turns out that people were using it to do theater with this whole time.