MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 86)
scent of the day: Kouros, by YSL (based on three: Paris, Paris-Parfums Corps, and Parfums Corps)
Kouros (1981, Pierre Bourdon)—a spicy-leather fougere or, perhaps more accurately, a dessicated-earthworm barbershop fragrance, that pops off (and at a whistle register) with enough sour urinal pucks of citric-soap aldehydes, and enough camphoraceous herbs and honeyed tobacco, to evoke cigarette-hazed 80s gym locker rooms of pissy Speedos and disinfectant tile floors (a fearless intensity, a non-autotune non-Botox non-Kardashian rawness, captured perfectly in the “Body Talk” intro montage to the 1984 film Toxic Avenger)—
takes its celebration of animalics in a direction a bit more scrotum-flap then labia-crease on the skatole-indole spectrum of underwear wicking (a bodybuilder-halitosis combo of civet tincture and civetone, plus a Boss-Number-One reminiscent combo of stale-urine honey, perineum-musk jasmine, and furry-metallic nitromusks)
and then, in what gives the composition almost a true-crime flair that distinguishes it from many such crotch-rot odes in the history of perfumery (my 1930s bottle of Shocking by Schiaparelli is an example, although it uses real Tonkin musk instead of musk ketone and musk ambrette), places the bacteria-rife genitalia—tissues slow to rebound to your poke, eerier than a dog lip stuck in a weird position—under shovels of bacteria-rife soil by means of a curb-stomp overkill of Animalis 1745-3 Synarome (the star ingredient here as it is in Figment Man, a geosmin aromachemical that brings not just aromas rootcellars and nightcrawlers but also subtle facets of wool sweat like costus, sundried urea like civet, and even musty tobacco like castoreum),
all this carnality balanced out—indeed, and as opposed to the clean-dirty tug of war people often cite, largely covered over in my book—by how the synthetic laundry musks (so much damn clothesline-soap galaxolide that I get more hot-ironed sheets spritzed with Avon than the corpse underneath) works with several other elements that make Kouros’s Quran-like reputation of inimitability somewhat entertainable (entertainable only, and the same goes for the Quran, if we are feeling tipsy with charitability since (a) it has been said that the dupe Man Silver by Milton Lloyd bests even the vintage original and since (b) Kouros’s spirit finds modern-day embodiment in several fragrances in my own collection, most notably Amouage’s Figment Man and Meo Fusciuni’s Narcotico):
(1) bracing aromatics (Alka-Seltzer aldehydes, sparkly-tea bergamot, dusty-barky cinnamon, bitter-mint clary sage, savory-wormwood tarragon, celery-seed coriander), (2) retro florals (carrot-root orris, pepper-clove carnation, green-rosy geranium), (3) foresty elements (Irish-Spring oakmoss, lichen-laced patchouli, grass-root vetiver), and (4) sticky mastics (lemon-pine olibanum, smoked-suede labdanum) that altogether (and further calling into question the claim of inimitability) form almost a tarragon-patchouli herb-and-mulch cross between Smalto Pour Homme, Lagerfeld Cologne, and Yatagan—
the overall effect being a smoky-sweet classic that stretches my nostalgia to that big-hair 80s time of shoulder pads and MTV glitterati, of card catalogues and neon arcades, of ET fingers and Members-Only jackets; of Trapper Keepers and Oregon Trail, of staticky analog synth and grainy pixel art, of Polaroid flapping and Atari joysticks clicking, of beeps and boops in wood-paneled basement dens, of acid-wash jeans and Garbage Pail Kid door stickers, of Madonna’s lace gloves and Jackson’s moonwalk, of “Be Kind Rewind” and Nancy’s “Just Say No,” of little Arnold’s “Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?,” of “It’s 10 PM, do you know where your children are?,” of Walkmen and Aqua-Net coughing, of Reagan coke lines and Robert Downey Jr. hickeys, of the futurist cityscape glowing in Blade Runner
(although I will say that Furyo, along with contemporary concoctions like the Dunhuang and Rattikarn of Prin’s Big Trouble in Little China universe, evokes in me, much more than Kouros, that Tron-Blade-Runner retrofuturism with its vaporwave aesthetics of cyan-and-magenta-dominant neon and wireframe flatscapes and sixteen-bit red Ferrari Testarossas with rear-window louvers reflecting the fuchsia of a “Tokyo” skyline at Super-Nintendo dusk);
the overall effect being, in other words, a musky-floral aromatic fragrance that, in melding an animalis core with a bright fougère chassis to make for a blue-porta-potty-juice powerhouse of sleaze and spice (perhaps best embodied by James Spader in the 1987 film Less Than Zero), lifts loamy soil aromas (think: the earthworm soil of Figment Man or even the banana-peel soil of Night Flyer) into the paisan-and-capisce territory of Italian horn necklaces and sweaty windbreaker tracksuits and pomade-slicked hair (and, of course, the industrial cleaning solutions used by mobsters to clean up their Lincoln Town Cars and Buick Electras and Chevy Caprice Classics after burying bodies in such soil).
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 86)
a midnight train whistle, too distant to jar you from dozing
just a pregnancy test and a cheap bottle of wine in the shopping basket
exhausted by the long silence in the conversation
what is “natural” for us is to expand the universe of what is natural
more realistic this time, his promise is never to hit her again full force
putting the infant to sleep by blowing blunt smoke into its nose and mouth
surgeons cutting through tattoos
blame the holder of the mirror instead of addressing the cracks it reveals
fossils contradicting scripture, in place to test our faith
therapists not allowed to give the teary child the hug it needs
a jazz record spins as a breeze comes through the window, but tomorrow there is work
so desperate for the possibility of humanity beyond mere sleaze, so tired of the fuck-tomorrow scams, that we have entered a time where we choose the company that tells us there are others better
neurotic, after a nap that went into night, about having missing out on something— you remember this feeling from childhood
how do you muster normal airs for the mailman when you rage on social media, telling strangers “I hope one day your fuckin kid gets ass-raped”?
trying to prove otherwise to naysayers at least might result in your religion—no matter its talk of beheading the faithless in a global conquest—actually transforming into one of peace
elevating a hope into a truth
rancid deep-fryer grease deforming the backyard foliage
“God-fearing” online dating photos centered on asses dangled to be pollinated
a revolutionary change in your relationship with mortality
wanting to keep close, unite with—ingest—that to which we are so drawn
scholars itinerating cemeteries for the epitaphs
details in an anti-symbolist poem accruing symbolic weight
dream journals ruin the purgative healing
having a non-alcoholic beer in your hand, label ripped off, to have something in your hand just as much as to avoid explaining that you quit
the mother scrubs the soap but not the boyfriend; changes the diet but not the company she fucks; buys cotton but refuses to buy the truth: grown-man girth, not soaps or sugary drinks, have infected her toddler
stopping up your toilet with clothes to flood the cell
raising your kid to think that to contest you would be, in effect, to contest the Lord
hypersexually stimulated by the very diatribe against a culture of hypersexuality
watching death unfold before you, unfazed while on heroin
how could it be craziness if everyone participates in it?
how can it be addiction if you have endless access?
some say that it is unnatural to extend life, but as humans it seems unnatural not to try to
that God is dead to us is perhaps most manifest when even devout beloveds scoff with skepticism at our claim of a spiritual bond with them
a new world of technology where what causes pleasure is not so harmful anymore
allowed to bring out the humor of the tragedy only after some vague passage of time
heroic doses of hallucinogens from which you do not know if you will ever get back
giggling to yourself has others hopeful that you are fine now, even as it means that you have joined the inner voices
the pilot merely said “The unidentified aircraft moved in a skipping fashion, like if you wung a tea saucer across a pond,” but the press summarized this as “Pilot sees flying saucers"—shaping our eyes to see just that since then
is it not enough that we, and with us meaning, have bloomed from reactions in primordial hydrothermal vents?
“Your advantage over the bigger guy,” the dad said, “is that he does not know you’re willing to kill him and his family”
our people live among the people who cannot afford to take the trouble to replace what our people rob
losing your job, eveb being fined, for accidentally failing to use a preferred pronoun—is that a bad sign?
how often has malice, not sanctity, caused the flagellated to smile in peace through torture, knowing that the tyrant is frustrated by his impotence to snuff out the inner light?
cemeteries sedulously segregated in a futile attempt to stop color from disappearing in the grave
racial confirmation surgery rebuked even by those filled with warm fuzzies hearing of gender confirmation surgery
pissed less about bottles thrown at you than about all the money wasted now that they cannot be cashed in
