Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is available for pre-order from your favorite online book seller. Release date is June 20, 2023. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

The Smell of Brut
Just a brief whiff of his neck, a tiny sniff of that soft pink skin laced with perfect platinum peach fuzz, launched a reverberating chain reaction of unprecedented sensation, an orchestra of strings swelling, chills rippling up my arms and down my legs. Is this normal? Is it merely a scent that’s hurled me into an alternate universe? Rendered me helpless, a mass of quivering flesh, on the precipice of out of control, at the mercy of who knows what? What’s happening to me? This is way more than what I felt at age ten in the Coolidge Corner movie theater watching “A Hard Day’s Night” when Paul – he who needs no last name - looked directly at me. I loved the Beatles, but Paul had stolen my heart. How in the world could his grin, the way he cocked his head to the left, make my stomach flip upside down in a way that was so much better than any roller coaster or when someone ran their nails up and down my back?
But this, these electrocuted nerve endings, this sudden I don’t know who or what I am, and I don’t care, as though someone changed the channel, took over my mind and body all at once, replaced it with what can only be described as temporary euphoria. Meadows filled with bright yellow flowers, swaying in a warm breeze. Technicolor rainbows and a million shooting stars, sunlight glinting on freshly fallen snow. How could a fragrance, an odor, a simple smell trigger such a phenomenon? Pipe down, Shakespeare. It’s just a product, for God’s sake, a liquid formula created in a laboratory and mass marketed to men and boys everywhere. Is it possible that it only has this reaction on me? Could this unique mix of chemicals somehow be awakening hidden sensory receptors in my body alone? Or perhaps I’ve discovered something. They’d have to redo their ad campaigns. But if it could do this for others, how could they sell this in stores? Its power is too great. And, if they did, how could anyone afford to buy it? No price would be too high.
And yet they named it. After a savagely violent person or animal. Yes, that’s what had me in its grip. Something fierce. Uncontrolled. Primitive. Uncivilized. Just one word. One word, minus the final letter. The culprit was BRUT.