Even after all those years...

My wife visited her parents for a few days last weekend and brought back a few of our things, including a couple of books and DVDs I really missed.
 
Later last night, I was in the studio and an impression of something familiar seemed to struggle to make its way into my conscious mind. After a while I surmised that it was a smell, but it was so faint that only vague images came to mind, surfacing for a fraction of a second before vanishing again. 
 
I went to bed thinking that my tired brain was playing tricks on me. This morning when I entered the studio, it was as if all those vague impressions finally merged into something I could identify - that was a smell associated with the first time I quit smoking back in 2008. 
 
I picked up one of the books, and sure enough, that's what it was - that lingering smoker's place fragrance. Faint but definitely present.
 
Pretty disturbing that even after years in a non-smoking environment, that scent was preserved. Also discernible were traces of monoxide form the 2 years I spent living on a busy street and had my books piled up on the window sill, from 2008 to 2010.
 
Call me Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.
 
I remember in early 2000 selling a guitar to a friend who told me that his girlfriend didn't want him to keep it in the room because it smelled like cigarette. I thought she was nuts... Now I get it!
 
I can't imagine how I'd feel walking into my first tiny home studio, where I lived, ate, drank, slept - and smoke 2 packs a day. Eww...

I (somewhere, maybe still) have a QEMM manual that reeks of Marlboro Country.
 

2 packs of Marlboro here. quit nearly 27 years ago and I can smell it on a smoker as soon as they walk into the same room.

I'm not too sensitive to actual smoke. My wife still smokes (though not in the house) and I don't mind. So do a lot of our friends. Whenever we go out, I often end up sitting at a table with a bunch of smokers (because, Las Vegas, you know...) and it doesn't bother me at all.
 
Old smoke is a different story though. People who smoke indoor in their home have that smell. It's not disgusting but it's really not something I would want to smell like myself. And I know I did for decades (I smoke for 30 years, roughly). Can't imagine going back.

I have an acoustic guitar with a cedar top that I bought from a luthier friend 16 years ago just before I took it to Southern Spain where I bummed around for a bit (and had quite a nice time). The smell of that ceder was very strong back then and the association with that Spanish trip became cemented in my mind. Even now when I take a good whiff of it, although it's not as strong as it was I'm still taken back to a Spanish beach at night smoking hash and watching lightening storms over toward Morocco, as if it were yesterday. 
 
I gave up smoking tobacco in 1994 at the age of 21 and yeah it really hits you how disgusting the smell is. I see girls on the street smoking and I think wow, after all the effort you went to with the clothes and the makeup and the designer bag, and here you are doing something which makes you smell like a Port Authority bum. 
 
Sometimes when I get a whiff of cigarette smoke now I'm taken back to my first few smokes at the age of 14, which coincided with my first experiments with alcohol. That feeling of sitting with a can of beer and a cigarette, neither of which you particularly liked the taste of, but it made you feel so grown up and therefore awesome. LOL!

jamesg1213
Never smoked in my life. Decorated a customer's hallway while she was out of town last week, big smoker. Horrible brown stains around the pictures and mirrors when I took them down. Had the door and windows open all the time, still had a pounding headache after each day.

I once went to see a new customer at her house on the way home from work one day and as she opened the door it was like watching an episode of Stars in their Eyes....."tonight Matthew I'm going to be an old lady with nicotine stained hair"..........
 
Mrs Paulo took some convincing that I hadn't been down the pub.
 
 

From my long list of things I don't miss about being in bar band:
Opening the lids on my synth rack back at home after a weekend of working in bars. That stale smoke smell oozing out of the rack into my studio always made me sick to my stomach.