Affection

There is something intimate about soap.  A familiarity shared between it and human beings, known by only a very few other inanimate objects.  Perhaps warm, clean sheets, crisp and soft on a newly made up bed, have some idea of this intimacy.  Chocolate, creamy, smooth, and delicious, melting, enveloping, satisfying – chocolate might also know of this relationship. 

From the hour you were born, until this very day, perhaps this very hour, you have known soap, and it you.  It has cleaned you, caressed you, soothed your skin, invigorated and refreshed you, both body and mind. 

Soap is so important, so sustaining, so familiar.  And by that familiarity, so overlooked and unappreciated.  

For reasons forgotten a thousand generations ago, people are drawn to soap.  This attraction goes deeper than the need to wash each day.  It goes deeper than a curiosity to smell or use something new or pleasantly fragrant.  It goes even deeper than the lifelong relationships it has known. 

Watch someone, a girl perhaps, or a woman of any age.  Watch her take up a new bar of soap, especially a nice soap, even a brand she has never known before.  Without exception, she will lift it affectionately.  Eyes closed, she will carefully touch it to the underside of her nose or to the soft tip of her upper lip, and fully, deliberately take in the aroma. 

If she likes what she discovers there, she will smile contentedly and again breathe in that scent. 

If a friend is near, she will hold it out for the friend to smell.  If she is alone, and she thinks you have watched her quiet, fragrant dance, she will look at you quickly, timidly, and, catching your eye, glance away again.  

“How much,” she will ask, her eyes averted, holding the bar again to her nose, “How much for this bar of soap?”