Gonzo Domestic Squabble (ROUND 2)
scent of the day: Ottoman Empire 2, by Areej le Dore
Still rough notes—only second or third wear.
Here we get the dates of Ormonde Jayne’s Taif Elixir dipped in Civet de Nuit honey (an ancient honey that has taken on the smnell of wood) and then dusted with cinnamon and pollen. it comes off—largely because of the warm spices, like the female sunny version—bright like Jubilation XXV—of Serge Noir, like the overworld version.
Unexpected waxiness (like Inverno Russo), the opposite of dusty and yet not flowing butter (more like sealed paraffin): the pink rose feels like it is covered in candle wax—think Dia Man or, even better yet, Honour Man rose-oud (a rose-oud Honour Man)./ The connection to honour man is quite strong given the overlap in nutmeg and black pepper and vetiver, all creamy in their own way (amplifying the creaminess of the sandalwood and the bulgarian rose)./
It could seem, at least for those without experience with how honeyed some roses can smell, that the rose you get here is not like the hyperrealistic ones you get in many Ensars (such as Eo 3 Rugosa). Fantasical or realistic, one thing is clear: the roses here (luminous-lemon white rose, spiced-honeycomb Bulgarian rose, raisin-hay Indian rose) synergize into the opposite of bath-bomb rose (soapy, baking soda, metallics) and so not like Eau de Protection or Deviant or Little Song or even to a small extent (given its comparative effervescant quality) Ottoman Empire III—all solid fragrances, especially the utterly artistic Little Song, that come to mind.
Ottoman Empire II, like Anatolia Anatolia, goes into the sweet gourmand side of rose, growing increasingly citrusy (waxy lemon peel) as the white rose rises and the jasmine does too (another source of honey). Think rose-water desserts like loukoum—or, perhaps more accurately, rose-flavored wax lips, those wax lips candy from back in the day that you could wear and then chew on but rose flavored. Despite the connection to Anatolia Anatolia it should be said that Ottoman Empire is much more naturalistic smelling and does not have the boisterous oudiness and exhaust-fume industrial aromas.
The wax lips that Ottoman makes me think of, pink wax lips (perhaps with the asymmetrical ripple of a snails foot to mimic capture the labia evoked by the oud and jasmine), seem more brooding than is appropriate for children, like a candymade for adults—an effect similar to what I get in Serge Noire, which presents a Candy Land black gum drop but adultifies it with cumin and smoke among other things. If Serge Noire give you Lord Licorice, this gives you instead the inverse: someone closer to Princess Lolly—albeit zoomed into her vulva, friction burned by the highest Hitachi Wand settings. First, you have sweetness-curbing spices: black pepper, which brings a pine-needle element, and saffron, which brings a metal dust element. Second, the honeycomb wax lips have a subtle mentholic edge due to the mothballed-perineum jasmine and the eucalyptus cardamom. Second, there is this wood and leather element here (musky-syrup labdanum, sandalwood, saffron) amplified and dirtied in a fungal direction by assam oud and oakmoss and bitter myrrh. Third, you have a boozy tropicality given how the coconut-almond frangiapani synergizes with the fruity fermentation of the assam oud and the rose.
Very vintage feeling—it conveys that, however, without going deep into the musty antique wood direction, which is a good feat. The vintage feel is not that antique woodiness, that musty woodiness that I like—it is more based around the oakmoss, which makes it seem like a vintage Guerlain (like Heritage or something like that) and gives it a noted french feel.
Maybe this exposes me as a philistine but I prefer Inverno Russo, although two things should be said: (1) I only gave Inverno two proper wears and (2) in both the case of Ottoman and Inverno the retail price was perfect—they are not meant to be priced at what I got them for. If you are a collector of rarity, then yes—then maybe you are okay with approaching 1k on these. However if you are primarily an enjoyer of scents, do not pay the scalper prices—and, if thousands are burning a hole in your pocket you would be better served by building a big cart at Ensar and getting loads of “freebies” and samples.
The wax feels like it wears down in time and, as it does, the oud rises out and there is a time when it has an appeal like Katana’s Oud Chaotique and even a vanilla too like that frag. at this point, although before the deep dry down, the wax lips candy become more like sponge cake soaked with a citrus rose butter—this largely a function of the frangiapani and the sandalwood, which together give use a whipped-butter cake mix feel.
The frangiapani tropicality reminds me a lot of Bortnikoff, as if Bortnikov had his hand in this fragrance. it is not only the Frangiapanie that makes it seem that way, but the fact that it’s so elegant and not boisterous with the Oud. muskiness comes out in the dry down but it is very subdued and subtle—nothing like Inferno Russo which is loud on the musk and one of the main reasons why I think that Inverno Russo—another pink rose—is the improved version of this.
slight smokiness comes out in the dry down that I didn’t expect (and it really adds to that friction-smoked-Hitachi-vibrator-head feel), but it is there—almost that match stick aroma that I get from a lot of ouds like oud Taiwan but also a lot of Ensars. Gets noticeably chocolate vanilla in dry down.
*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.
*Worked all over today. Perhaps I might have written one of my best poetry lines in decades of writing: “the sugar of the verboten still locked in cookie jars.” Jesus Christ that is good.
Gonzo Domestic Squabble
Drunken shouts became a sloppy knot in the grass. Mounted on his chest, the girl—her tit torn free— grunted berserk hammerfists to his skull. I watched from my dorm. That hyperarousal of helplessness, that battery brine—my mouth knew the slaver of it, retching, before I did. Electricity tingled my pinkies like in childhood. I needed in on it, on their union, like when my mom and men fought in a fuck coil fecal with the piston of glucking fists, her shark eyes dead to Teddy and me—as far as a child could know, the sugar of the verboten still locked in cookie jars. A nonagent, less than zero, I felt. I felt my way in darkness to the kitchen where my suitemate, out on another date, 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 fracas 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 despite the upheaval pounding through the carotids. Female shrieks, so familiar, followed the BB strike and bodies punched for oxygen. Spurred by a sting, the man took his mount with headbanger chokes. Cock engorged, like it was when her squirt pelted Teddy and me with that salty 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 vinegar clacks—clack, clack— I knew from many semesters had to have ricocheted against the brick. But some phantom ring in my ears screamed, my brain tunneling its 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 unseen hands now pulling the strings—my barrel too far out, reckless like when I dropped Teddy to suck her nipple (warping back into gaga) as she blew again, lowing like a cow in estrus. He kept uppercutting her gut even though she was through. 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)
