Gonzo Domestic Squabble (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Iris Cocao Mysore Edition, by Miyaz
Smoky dusty—right from jump this would beat (even curbstomp) Melt My Heart were it not lacking the stunning musk I get there. Assam oud is loud like in Bete de Fiore. The varietal seems similar to what I get in both Elevation and Risk. Elevation and Iris Cocao fortunately are not boosted by amberwood synthetics. However, the fact that they all share the oud aroma of Risk makes me read in a synthetic note by Pavlovian association. Yes, the damage does by superambers are not just about ruining otherwise good scents and ruining restaurant experiences, but it can by association tarnish even scents bereft of them.
The Miyaz fragrances are stunning and they are what I was looking for when I first got into oud and wanted the dirty animalic variety. I have broadened my palate since then but yes this does scratch that itch. The only issue is that the oud presence is so monumentous in the Miyaz perfumes that every fragrance can start smelling the same, especially after the fragrances sit for years and the base becomes more prominent—the redundancy level between Miyaz fragracnes is about at the level we got from Bianchi frags in her heyday of orris obsession.
Miyaz fragrances, like Oud Session from Elkhaldi, read like sprayable attars. If you like that experience, or would like to ease your way into attar wearing, then I would recommend it. The oud presence is louder in Bete de Fiore but Iris Cocao lacks the big vanilla impression I get there. If we are beign uncharitable we might see Miyaz as an Areej le Dore dupe brand. But even if we see it that way, which is not the truth ultimately, these Miyaz fragrances beat the Areej at their own game. Luna for example outdoes ottoman Empire and Iris Cocao and others like Bete de Fiore beat out in funk and pungency Russian Oud. Why I do not think this is a dupe brand is that Areej le Dore will go elegant, into more Bortnikoff territory. Miyaz fragrances have a committed through line of Assam funk. And this means that when they do Jasmine it is going to come off not elegant and pretty like we get in sever Areej jasmines, but rather mixed with an assam oud that make the whole smell—as in the case of my favorite Miyaz Fleur Tabac—like powerbait fishing plastics.
I need more time thinking about this one. The Orris is more there to work with the sandalwood to make an extreme buttery texture. But since the Assam oud is prominent, the overall effect is to make a creamy version of Assam.
*Let’s workshop this poem about a college student’s clandestine intervention in a courtyard dispute that triggers a visceral psychological regression into childhood trauma.
Gonzo Domestic Squabble
Drunken shouts shifted into sloppy wrestling. Mounted on his chest wordless with mission, the girl grunted out berserk punches and claws to his face. From my dorm window I watched the tangle. That helpless hyperarousal, sweet— I had not felt the nauseous slaver of it in years. Heart-thumping electricity tingled my pinkies like in childhood. I needed in on the union, like when my mom and men fought in a coil fecal with fists, shark eyes of gag groans dead to me and teddy—as far as a child could know. A nonagent, less than zero, I felt. I felt my way in darkness to the kitchen where my suitemate, on a date tonight, kept his pest control loaded. I pumped the air rifle at an edging pace. I bore a hole in the screen for its tip to retake control.
As with my mom and her men, my need to add extra fury into the fight was an ache righteous because I mattered nothing to them, righteous because pain and injury come with the territory. Lured by the homecoming prospect that I might rise out of oblivion, that my intervention might make one body annihilate the other (clear proof as to whom mastery belongs), my aim held still even through the upheaval of beats in my chest. Female shrieks, familiar, followed the bb strike and bodies punched. Spurred by another sting, the man took the mount for headbanger chokes. Cock engorged, like it was when her squirt pelted teddy and me with that sour musk of hot copper like we were no more than tarps in a cloudburst, I pumped—beyond ten—and took a third shot.
Voices from other windows in the quad heckled and I took the fourth shot and the fifth, no longer caring to cover my noise or the mirror it formed. I pumped again, the clacks—clack, clack, clack— I knew from my semesters had to have ricocheted against the brick. But a phantom ring screamed in my ears, my brain tunneling attention. I shot. My soul, my cock, needed him to forget her need to breathe. That felt familiar too. “Ahhh! Fuck!” he yelled, holding his face in response to the hand unseen but with a story all his own—my barrel way out the window, reckless like when I sucked her nipple (a time travel back just like this now). The girl scrambled up but he punched her gut and dragged her by the hair. Red and blue strobes had him flee to the woods, the girl sobbing like her.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
