Amor Prohibido (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Orange Star, by Tauer
Orange Star (2010, Andy Tauer)—an orange-incense fragrance that spins diverse citrus elements (honeyed clementine, sweet-tart mandarin orange, herbaceous lemongrass, heady orange blossom, and likely some bitter-green petitgrain) through Tauer’s signature resinous-hazy filter (as seen in L’Air du Désert Marocain) to make for what I see as the orange-resin sibling of Incense Extreme (or, as I sometimes call that fragranc, Lemon Star)—
should make me think of eating a creamsicle in a grove of citrus trees swirled by a Mediterranean breeze (which it can do) or even of scratching a frankincense tear into from a briny piece of driftwood on which Fanta-floral ambergris marmalade has been spread and allowed to bleach in the sun (which it does even more) but, in how the Tang powder mixes with oceanic evaporite, I much more get the image (and smell) of an clementine-mandarin-flavored baby aspirin pestled into a mineralic dust and swept away like cocaine off a record case by a sneeze)—
the overall effect being a fruity-fresh fragrance that, while happy as Andy’s own smile and teetering on the industrial edge of mall bathroom cleaner (just a little bit more lemongrass, and a bit less cinnamon and vanilla, perhaps would have tipped it over), brings a dark undertone (almost like a hint of citrus rot) that makes it more brooding than the more action-oriented Habit Rouge (as if dark clouds are on the horizon of an otherwise sunny scene);
the overall effect being, in other words, a marine-citrus fragrance that, despite the unique edgy elements of mineral-spirits-meets-sun-fermented citrus (truly a benchmark for citrus in its juicy-to-dry variety the way Sultan Vetiver is for vetiver), does bear enough of that strong dusty base DNA of Taur to be considered a flanker to some prototype (usually we say not the first release, Le Maroc Pour Elle, but the second, L’air du Desert Moracain) that best embodies the taureade fingerprint: bittersweet and salty soda bubbles that seem coated in a stony powder (olibanum, myrrh, and ambergris rooted in tonka, vanilla, and labdanum), a powder made extra dusty by culinary spices like coriander and dry woods like Texas cedar.
*Let's workshop this poem--set to Selena’s song “Amor Prohibido”--about a man, presumably older, inviting a girl on a getaway, presumably in a DM--a DM aiming to balance playfulness and predation.
Amor Prohibido
Hey. I think you should let me spoil you a bit. Your semester starts soon, right? So how about we do a little Airbnb getaway before school sinks its claws in you? I know that’s forward.
But I know what I want. And I know enough about this world to know what you need. I promise to be a gentleman—until, of course, you give me the green light to be otherwise.
“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)
