The Printout (Round 4)
scent of the day: Musk Sultani, by Ensar Oud
Here we have another insane musk release. Real musk is the most seductive thing imaginable, how it envelops you in this fuzzy-animal aura that draws other in and you as well—not in the meditative way of sandalwood but in a one-way sex way: ménage à moi. It literally will make people swoon. I hate hype and BS but that shit is absolutely true. It is even perfect for self love. Some days I think I want to give musk a higher place than oud. But then I remember that on different days I need different things. Some days I want to radiate a texture of impossible to describe fuzzy allure. Those are musk days. Other days I want to smell like varnished mahogany or horse stable or moldy cheese. Those are oud days.
Musk Sultani is a Cambodian oud take on Private Blend. It do not own private blend but I own the supersaiyan evolved form of it: Of Wolves and Men. The Of Wolves and Men version I have is Kamboche—the Kambuche refering to the name that Cambodia had in the late seventies. Since both frags give a staring place to the musk and cambodian oud, and since both give us a fruit-sandalwood-rose melange, they are extremely redundant for everyone but the top-tier connoseuirs.
That said, there are some things that make it different. There are differences even in regards to their shared notes.
Take Cambodian oud, for example. Both give a bitter kinamic cambodian oud a lead role. Sultani used a melange, however, of Chenla, Ko Kon, and Pusat—the top-shelf Cambodian ouds (as no doubt basement wizards like Yaaseen’s Moustafa I imagine could testify to). Wolves, on the other hand, used an Oriscent blend that centers the Pusat (which give an extremely red vibe) and, although like the same three varieties, comes here in denser concentration for a more medicinal effect—a medicinal effect that goes in a dark-red-cherry direction because of the addition of Vietnamese oud (an effect that Sultani does not have).
As for the fruits, Sultani goes citrus whereas Wolves goes blackberry. And as for the rose, Sultani contains a wide variety (bourbon, turkish, Japanese perhaps)—many boosting the citrus brightness. As for the sandalwood, it seems to play a bigger role in Sultani than in Wolves even though its buttery side is more emphasized in Wolves and its green and dry in Sultani. As for the musk, both use Kashmiri-tibertan-tonkin trifecta of Private Blend but Wolves adds in Mongolian (perhaps my favorite musk) for more of a chocolately cream effect.
Thje cumin and schizuan of Sultani is the most over way this scenbt stands out. And then more refined noses with notice that Sultani jhas more diverse animalics. Wolves is moreso centered on Musk. It reads as more elegant: a furry musk, more serious than jokey, soaking cherry tobacco in an apothecary. Sultani brings castoreum (a bit played ouyt in Ensar’s repetoire) and lemon-piss civet too. Musk sultani—merging the cumin-pepper spice of Siber Extreme and yet the Musk-Khabib-style fresh-brightness of Musc Millesimime—reads more feral: a furry musk, bright and energetic, blooming from sun-cured beaver leather.
It really is unbelievable that some of us can have access to this. These aromas are life redeeming.
The Printout —for C-Ride, a best friend for life
It was a heart-pounding last-minute scramble— a dance the barely-teen latchkey knew by heart. He washed his lather-proof hand (over dishes) as best he could, pelvic floor still echoing spasms. He placed the jar of petroleum jelly (too-bare) in the medicine cabinet, label faced in (as it was). He hid the black-tape-bound banana-peel pouch (a MacGyvered apparatus less spicy in practice) first in his toy chest and then, panged by paranoia, in the kitchen garbage—greasy and browning. He ran the dwindled roll of that electrical tape to the basement, rocks in its radon walls like eyes. He buried the skid panties that strapped his face, just right for deep nostril tokes of the tart patch, in his mom’s hamper (pausing at a crustier pair). He pounced to his room upon the muffler scrape as if engaged in his penny-rolling chore all along, curtain shadows ghostly on wood-panel walls.
His windows rattled in the wake of the door slam reverberating through the uninsulated hollows. It unnerved him even though he anticipated it. But once keys clanged the curbside coffee table, ear-perking silence thickened. In computation it thickened. Smackdab on the living room floor, in the carpet’s worn path, lay an inkjet image— washed out from a cartridge low on black, too yellow from an empty cyan—pixilated on printer paper: black thighs, spread-eagle, onto which the hyperventilating marauder in his mask had moments before, squatting in ache, pumped out a diaphanous payload, chlorine pool in odor (“All over you, Bitch”).
“What the fuck is this?!” his mom shrieked. He surged up from the pennies, possessed by a fierce dread that he had been found out. Yet by the time he reached the cold doorknob, confident there was no way he failed to cover every taboo track, he found himself possessed more so by a twisted curiosity to learn, that if by some crazy chance he had been found out, what damning detail he could have missed.
“What—the fuck—is this shit?!” she shrieked. Clutching the printout in a fist that gobbled the pan-African-hued header “Nubian Slut” (pussy-ink-robbing red-black-green nutted to ogling the line-by-lagged-line load of dialup), she thrust the gleaming gorgon head (half-balled) out in his direction (arm’s length), turning him to stone in the ramshackle threshold, his expiry dribbling coagulated to black waitress sneakers..
“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)
