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Notes -
Paging @Closedshop.
I decided I need a cologne. My problem is, I hate so many basic scents I have no idea what to look for. To be more specific:
Practically everything from your post features either patchouli or vetiver. I have no idea where to start if I can't stand either of them.
Smells I like: sea, pines (and conifers in general), pipe tobacco, coffee, citrus, chocolate, cherry, vanilla, rain, wild mushrooms, leather.
Why do you want cologne? The best smell is no smell, just be clean. I’ve never once had someone walk by me surrounded by a miasma of perfume and thought to myself “How wonderful! How intoxicating!”
Any smell is disgusting and rude, it is the equivalent of black kids blasting music on their phone on the subway. Hard to believe, but the smell of a Yankee Candle store does not give me an erection. I disallow my wife from using any scented products at all.
Disallow her, do you?
Several months ago I was on a train headed to wherever, and I believe a Korean guy sat next to me (Japanese men tend to avoid scents, at least when going to work). The Korean guy was wearing some sort of cologne, or eau de toilette or whatever--the smell hit me immediately. Suddenly I was standing outside a shower where the person exiting had become cleaner than imaginable. To use the word "soapy" would be an injustice to the scent. I wish that I had the gift of describing smells, because this one transported me to a place I did not know existed. I found myself purposefully inhaling through my nose. I felt that I could sit by this man for hours, for the rest of the day, or maybe even life, and not complain. We could be friends, I could accompany him to places as a colleague. Were I slightly more fey I might have even turned to him and asked "Hey what kind of cologne are you wearing?" but I could not summon a way to ask it without feeling a permanent burning shame. This, I thought suddenly, must be what they mean by pheromones.
Yet I did not desire him. Aroma alone was not, alas, enough to alter my sexuality. I've only once smelled this same cologne on another guy, and that was on a down escalator in Namba station. It was unmistakeable. Enough to make me appreciate smell as a sense--we really don't, you know. We so easily forget it when we hold our noses at the farts and Durian and milk that's gone off. We put on masks and take antihistamines against the pollen.
And I've sought out this fragrance, I will admit to you now. I went in a high-end department store and wandered the kiosks, served by heavily made-up, but otherwise very attractive women, or suited, thin men who seemed overly enthusiastic. I tried Diptyque, Chanel, Maison Margiela, a lot of those on the list written by @Closedshop nine months ago. Nothing matched. Maybe it has to do with contact with skin or something. No idea. But I've never found the smell, and I don't even know if I did find it if I could bring myself to buy it. It seems like too much--too much energy, too much might. Like the ring of power, maybe you shouldn't be putting it on after all. Cast it into the fire, Isildur! And what if it only attracted a bunch of middle-aged men? Like I had men suddenly wanting to sit next to me, half-poised to ask me the same question I myself could not ask. That would be not good. What if my wife hated it? Or thought it meant I was trolling for attention from women?
If I could find it I imagine I would keep it all in the bottle, and come home some nights and close the door and uncap it and hold it to my nose, just briefly, like pinching the leaf of a lemon balm plant and smelling your fingers. Just a whiff. Or maybe I'd pour it into a handkerchief and snort it like modeling glue until the high put me on the floor. I don't know. It's hard to project how I would react if I had an unlimited supply of my own. Maybe that is what made it so amazing. Maybe if I did have it I'd tire of it, like a girlfriend. One day the thrill is gone.
As it is at least I know that smell exists out there somewhere, and tomorrow could be the day I encounter it again, though probably not if I am seeking it out by walking through Daimaru or wherever.
This whole wordy post just to say I suppose I get you. I don't like most perfumes. When I passed through the Dubai airport once I felt every Arab man there was doused in Paco Rabanne. It cloyed. And don't get me started on women whose hairspray, skin creme, and perfume create a baroque war in the nostrils.
But I've been to the mountaintop. And I've smelled the promised scent.
Still interesting that you disallow your wife to put on fragrance. I guess she's okay with this?
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