The West coast of America is a touch on the warm side at present. Temperatures in Seattle aren’t as scorching as in the South West, but it’s still plenty hot. It doesn’t help that AC is more of a nice to have than a must have around these parts.
Hot weather like this makes me desire two things. The first is to sit on a shaded patio, drink long tall drinks (a well made Singapore Sling is always a good option), and trade lazy conversation with my friends. The second is slow sticky sweaty sex of the non-kinky variety. That first desire is probably pretty common, but I’m not sure about the second. Most people want to avoid physical exertion in the heat. And it’s unusual for me to crave vanilla sex at all. I like it well enough, it’s just kink always seems to be more of a focus.
I suspect that the root of my desire is down to scent. Somehow in my mind the kind of light sweat and musk that people give us in the heat is associated with sex. That probably comes from growing up in cold damp England and never going to the gym. All my good memories about being sticky and sweaty involve intertwined naked bodies. As sensory associations go, it’s not a bad one to have.
This image of a beautiful sweaty body is by the photographer Andrew Lucas. I found it originally on the Systemat tumblr.
The question of olafactory stimuli, memory, and sexuality is an interesting one that’s been well-examined by Baudelaire and Proust, among others.
There’s a poem by Baudelaire in which he dreams of burying his face in his mistress’ hair, and drifting away on its scent.
“…if you could but know all that I see, all that I can smell and hear in your hair! My soul floats away on perfume as other men’s on music…”
In Proust of course, a long-lost scent is the key to ‘le temps retrouvé’ where an ancient experience is rediscovered not just as a memory, but as a lived reality, a sort of hallucinatory clone of the original.
Like many men, I have my own semi-fetishised ‘scent memories’ of women that go back to the age of three or four.
Your mention of Proust reminded me of a couple of articles I read on that famous madeleine. It’s often given as an example of involuntary memory, but possibly isn’t. You might be interested in them:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/prousts-madeleine-study_n_2775454.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2005/05/the_way_the_cookie_crumbles.html
Oddly, while scent is important to me, I really don’t have any of the scent memories you refer to from childhood. Although it’s possible that I’ve just not received the right triggers in the last decade or so to invoke them. These kind of things can often sneak up on you.
-paltego