I cannot tell you how many times I have had discussions concerning “the smell” with my single girl friends. For those of you not familiar with the utterly scientific sounding term, it has come to mean (at least in my inner sanctum) that perhaps thrice-in-a-lifetime sexual chemistry that is SO intense that you practically want to devour each other. Really it boils down to a hormonal scent that your “match” emits (through saliva, sweat, and other good stuff). On a subtle level, said aroma makes your mind go wild, and on closer inspection it makes you want to jump their bones.

Of course there are degrees of “the smell.” A pure concentration of it produces a relationship not unlike that of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner (all passion and unfortunately the double-edge to that sword: intense animosity). Lesser degrees make you pleasantly aroused by the person with slightly less animosity. But I can attest to the fact that with “the smell” there is always some level of animosity because this is a purely ‘opposites attract’ kind of phenomenon and opposites, well, they tend to clash. Other types of scents can produce a romantic feeling of sameness where kissing goes on forever and feels rhythmically congruous. And then there is of course what I have dubbed “the anti-smell,” an odor that is unmistakably repellant to you.

I am generally consciously drawn to men of Nordic, White Anglo Saxon Protestant or Germanic descent and guess what, the four guys I have experienced “the smell” with were respectively mixes of: Dutch, German and WASP, surprise, surprise. I am consciously turned off by Italians. And I will never forget, when I lived in New York, dating an adorable young Italian guy named Federico. He was sweet, gorgeous and fun and we liked each other on the surface, but there was a subtle “repellant” thing going on. I didn’t like the way he smelled. And believe me it wasn’t bad (as in body odor), just unfamilar and unpleasant to me (”the anti-smell”). Obviously we would have produced mongoloid babies.

I bring all of this up because just a couple of months ago, a company called Scientific Match launched in Boston. You subscribe to their service for an annual fee of something like $2000, send in a swab of your DNA and they will identify your matches (the people you would produce healthy children with and have a good sex life with, etc.). ‘The future of dating,’ seems to be the unsaid tagline. Possibly. But in my mind it’s more of an early harbinger of the future of dating because it seems to exclude another very important factor in the dating/mating game: demeanor.

I promise you, that had this service had the opportunity to match my DNA with, say, most of the men I know and have dated, it would certainly pair me with at least two of the most WRONG and awful matches for me. The sex would be stellar but our relationships would be a plate-throwing mess. Until Scientific Match has finessed its system to include compatible demeanors in conjunction with genetic opposition it will see an awful lot of law suits and quite simply create monstrous relationships.

In an ideal world, a service would be able to match you with someone who had 70% “the smell,” because 100% might just kill you both (or you’d end up cannibalizing each other, either literally or figuratively), and then an additional 80-100% match for demeanor. In other words, to make the latter work, you’d match a neurotic, control freakish alpha female say (and I’m not talking about anyone we know here) with a laidback, unphased, somewhat compliant beta male, and so on.

In the future, I imagine us all wearing tiny (albeit chic) devices that would flash red when in the presence of an absolute no match (crappy sex and clashing demeanors), orange for a poor match (crappy sex and complimentary demeanors), blue for a good match (good sex and somewhat complimentary demeanors) and green for an excellent match (incredible sex and totally complimentary demeanors). What a time saver!

Of course, there would be those rebels who would intentionally defy their own DNA’s judgment and go ahead and dive into the “red” zone. In a normal situation (sans DNA match-up technology) that red zone would imply running off with the guy on the motorcycle who’s in the band or your trainer at the gym. But within a DNA matching context rebellion loses that thrilling edge. You would quite simply end up with someone who you had terrible sex with, couldn’t stand the smell of, and argued with incessantly. Not quite as exciting as “Sleazy Rider” or “Pumping it Up with Sven.”

In conclusion, I’m sort of on the fence about the whole DNA matching thing. Part of me thinks that life’s too short to waste time with someone whose stench repells you and who couldn’t turn you on to save his life. The other part of me believes that “everything happens for a reason” even when it ends up being a catastrophe. I’m reminded of that brilliant scene in the quirky ’80s romantic comedy “Moonstruck” when Nicholas Cage is trying to get Cher to go home with him against her better judgment (he’s her fiance’s brother). She worries that they will ‘make a mess of things.’

He responds: “Love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We’re not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. We are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die.”

Ah, say it ain’t so. But I suspect it is.

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton