Tickle Theory Skepticism (ROUND 2)
scent of the day: Vicki-Lin, by TSVGA Parfums
I no longer think of Vicki-Lin as merely a super smoke bomb. It is actually an incense: a smoky incense, an onycha incense. Onycha—the operculum, or hard trapdoor plate from certain sea snails and mollusks—is the source material behind Choya Nakh, the product you get when those shell/operculum materials are roasted or dry-distilled and, traditionally at least, captured in sandalwood oil. The smell of Choya Nakh, the ingredient cited here and the ingredient that largely shapes the whole fragrance, is a kind of smoky umami: iodined leather that has soaked in the sea. Very biblical—the Bible describes onycha as one of the materials used in sacred incense. Not exactly the smell of “burning mollusk insides,” then, but close enough in spirit: the smell of scorched marine shell, sea-animal residue, salt, leather, and incense ash.
This is intended to capture a full campground experience: the animalic and pond elements, plus the charred-log aspects especially. Think: cooking caught trout over the fire. It is considered by many fragheads to be one of the ultimate smoky perfumes—more than T-Rex, maybe more than A City on Fire, etc.—although I am not totally sure about this, based on my own experience with it and what I have heard about other smoke-monsters. There is a mentholic feel in the nose overtop a burnt-match sulfur effect that is, despite the reputation—and although I am as blown out as a mother of six—very inviting and alluring. The drydown ash has more depth and character than either Oud Taiwan or Oud Luwak.
It is definitely a campfire fragrance with a lot of those lumbersexual indie notes: not just Choya Nakh, but Choya Loban—a resinous material, basically Indian frankincense, made by roasting/dry-distilling olibanum or Boswellia resin to highlight its smoky-tarry side over its pinene-lemonene side. There is also skunk cabbage, a marsh plant known for its skunky smell. But all of this is overshadowed, or maybe intensified, by burnt-log birch tar, used-charcoal cade oil, pine tar, and hickory-like guaiac effects that help make for a smoke bomb that is strangely gourmand: smoky-sweet barbecue ribs on top of a creamy, nutty, savory, oceanic umami. The umami is largely from the Choya Nakh, a distillation of toasted sea-mollusk opercula/shell material and sandalwood.
For however much I despise the lumbersexual Pacific Northwest white hipster in flannel, I definitely enjoy their artisanal perfumes and foods—a feeling that perhaps many of us feel as we keep going to Starbucks even though we hate that we do, although by “we” here I do not include me, since I never go to Starbucks.
The umami savoriness can go unnoticed, but it is there. It has the savoriness of a tare or fish sauce: the kind of broth-base funk that comes from steeping niboshi, dried anchovies, katsuobushi, smoked tuna flakes, and kombu, thick dried kelp, among other things, in Japanese soy sauce. Very umami and oceanic. This is probably due to an overlap of materials or effects with Rufio and Fiona—I suspect Rufio’s and Fiona’s onycha/Choya Nakh material, the snail-shell seal, gives a musky, leathery, slightly sweet, shroomy aroma with burnt or smoky undertones.
Skunk cabbage gives it a skunky feel. In the drydown, a peppery nuttiness reveals itself, and the whole thing starts to give off a wood-burning-stove impression—or even the smell you get when you walk into a home that has burned down. It smells less like mesquite liquid smoke used for pressure-cooking ribs and more like clothes that have been sitting next to a campfire. The charred-log feel is reminiscent of Silver Oud, albeit stripped of vanilla. This is authentic smoke: a smothered fire when there are still embers. It is a transportive and memory-triggering fragrance, perfect while having a fire in the backyard. The animalics come out through the tare-like savory essence, plus the skunk from the skunk cabbage. The opening is ash and citrus—almost bergamot-like bitterness—before the whole thing sinks into smoke, salt, leather, shell, resin, and char.
*Let’s workshop this poem about how the high-pressure physical response to violation can eclipse vanilla intimacy in such hurts-so-good fashion that it multiplies the trauma into something unnameable.
Tickle Theory Skepticism
Her unwanted arousal jackknifed into wanted enough for her command (“Get that shit. Get that fuckin pussy!”) to leak through the panties he stuffed down her throat— what would have been, even with the retching, at least some mercy. For this let her be loud but not quotable. It freed her from having to muzzle herself into whispers and yet still—the end matter all guttural groan, gagged gibberish inadmissible to the judgment of loved ones— blocked her ears to anything beyond neck-bulging rage, snarling orchestration hindsight would readily neuter into “No!” even with all the unsavory marks against her:
like how, in her heady greed, the cervical origin of “Balls to the wall” struck her for the first time; or like how the law “Hips don’t lie” would read the testimony of her gyrations; or like how the weapon she swung at him, joints popping in her lunge for the nightstand, happened to be the Hitachi Magic he made her hold. But no, the man stole back even this dangled grace of psychic deniability—not, however, by taking the panties out. Ass-fouled fingers lodged them deeper, choking the excuse “People’ll say anything to live,” and he cut straight to decrypting her spiritual communique frothing beneath the torn garment of all that blubbering:
“Mmm, yeah. Knew you was a mahfuckin nasty pig! Huh?” To see herself shift like this—right to bald grind work— after strokes too few and flaccid for the alibi of orgasm, shift so far out from the first of many pardon-windows (as if this mother of two were less a spectator, screaming to hearten another home stretch, than a coach, screaming from the first bungled drill)—how could that not square her trauma into a bucking fury of self-disgust unnameable even if there had been no struggle to get in the mood, let alone juice out so many rounds of ceiling-fan PSI, no matter how much her own pill-hard husband tried?
