Smelling bad is bad. Duh. That's why we call it "smelling bad".

But it wasn't obvious to me that smelling nice could be good. It seemed sufficient to simply not smell like anything. Smelling like nothing is already good; smelling nice is supererogatory.

Thus, for most of my life, I didn't worry about smelling nice. As long as I didn't smell bad, I smelled good. And that's a fine way to live, but I was also missing out.

Partly I meme'd myself out of trying to smell nice. I got the idea that only the "wrong" kind of men (whatever that meant) worried about smelling nice. My dad would complain about perfumes upsetting his allergies. I saw Mr. Bean nearly die at the perfume counter. I was sure I should stay away.

And there wasn't nothing to this meme. Perfume counters are overwhelming to my senses. Some scents do give me headaches or trigger my asthma. So I just stayed away.

But actually I was missing out. What I didn't understand is that not all scents are created equal.

I sort of knew this. There were some scents I really liked—rose, sage, bergamot, ferns, fog. I even sometimes bought scented candles so I could enjoy my favorite scents. But most scents had a quality that made them painful for me to smell, so I stayed away from most smelly things.

I'm a total amateur when it comes to scents, but I've come to understand that most of my problem was with what perfumers call "top notes": the sharp, crisp scents that cut through the other scents to make themselves know. To me, most top notes in most perfumes are too strong. They feel like they are cutting up the inside of my nose and I don't want to smell them!

But this isn't a reason to stay away from all scents, or from wearing scents. As I've been repeatedly told by wives and girlfriends, they like smelling me, and they like it when I smell nice. I finally got the message that, hey, maybe I can find smells that I can not only tolerate, but enjoy, and others would enjoy, too.

So I set out to track down smells that would work. I made a project of smelling a whole bunch of clearly labeled essential oils (basically oils with some volatile chemicals extracted from some thing in them) to figure out which ones I liked. Then I looked for scents that mostly had those smells in them.

I found a few that worked really well for me. One, in particular, was a surprise: rosewood. It smells great on me, and I love the way it smells. I never would have known if I hadn't gone looking. I now wear a perfume most days that is rosewood based, and knowing what smells good on me and that I like smelling, I've been able to explore and find other scents I can wear.

If you're thinking about getting into smelling nice, a few words of advice I can share based on my experience.

First, don't overdo it. Too much of any smell will overwhelm others and may set off their allergies. As a good rule of thumb, if someone is more than 3 feet away from you they shouldn't be able to smell you, and if you want to be even more subtle, they should have to be right up against you to smell you.

On this note, be careful not to overdose as you get used to a smell. Most perfumes need 1-2 sprays at most to last the whole day. You will become nose-blind to the smell. That's okay. It's still working and using more to get through your nose-blindness will make you overwhelming.

Also, if a place says it's "scent-free", don't wear perfume there, even if you really really want to. That's an anti-social move. Don't do it.

Second, experiment. Find smells that work well with your body chemistry, style, and personality. Scents create vibes for other people. Think about what vibe you are creating with your smell. Do you smell like food? Like a memory? Like sex? What do you want to smell like? Much like clothes, scents are a way to non-verbally send messages to others, and the messages you send can have powerful impacts, either drawing people to you or pushing them away.

Third and finally, don't smell bad. This is again perhaps obvious, but perfumes can't cover up bad body odor. They will instead combine to produce a smell that is both good and bad, like rotting fruit, that is in many ways worse than simply smelling bad. So first smell like nothing. Then smell nice.

Hopefully I've convinced you to try smelling nice. I wasted a lot of years smelling like nothing when I could have smelled like something good. Try it and see if you can't make the world a nicer smelling place.