Tickle Theory Skepticism (ROUND 4)
scent of the day: Peau d’Orris Edition Gold 50°, by Wasif Reza
First wear only, but bottom line: smells like War and Peace 3 and Purple Rain (or any classy version of Iris Ghalia, any version aside from Trifecta) were combined by none other than Maher from Elkhaldi—Elkhaldi or Elkhaldi Studio not “Elk” (Maher’s goons, sort of like the Persian version of Candyman, will come to your house strapped with suicide-vests if you speak otherwise enough times). Yes, think of Maher making this Frankenstein merger, but also adding (1) his beloved Sylheti variety of Bangladeshi oud, like we see in his Kasturi Cola, and (2) his characteristic overripe funky fruits, like we see in Nectar Royale, as well as—faintly, and as comes out in the mid—(3) a vegetal yet seminal yellow floral pollen feel, like we see in Narjis Noor.
Suede-like nectarine from osmanthus is beautiful in the beginning, and this draws further connections to Iris Ghalia (and even Antiquity and Mitsouko before it). What is cool, though, is that even in the freshest parts of the opening and early mid, there is this crazy dirtiness to the fragrance. This comes especially from the chocolatey-leathery Sylheti oud, which is responsible for the cacao-powder tobacco feel that the mid reveals and that continues on through the end.
By “dirt” I do mean earthiness, yes—an earthiness against which the lime of the opening, salivation-triggering like Forbidden Flower, seems to glint with direct sun. The recession of this solar oomph ushers the fragrance into an impression of being in the shade—outdoors, in spring or even summer, but in the shade—for the rest of the fragrance’s life. But by “dirt” I also mean funk. By “funk” I mean, yes, the mildewed tobacco and vegetal rot we get from the Thai oud—an oud from the Prachin Buri province, which is known for having, and as I have seen myself in Prin’s *Krissana*, medicinal-fermented tones somewhere between vegetal rot and root-beer sarsaparilla. But I mean also, and more importantly, funk as in James Brown—and a bit, yes, of Doo-Doo Brown (ODB, Dirt McGurt). For all the classy vintage refinement this has—an absolute dream for any lover of fruity orris, enough of a dream to have Bianchi do more than cream in her jeans—this sucker has soul. Purple Rain or Iris Ghalia might be more masterfully done. But this sucker has the advantage of roughhewn heart and soul with great ingredients.
Totally floored here. Not going with the castoreum overused in my collection—and appearing as well in War and Peace and Iris Ghalia—was a good choice. What was a really good choice was adding not only tobacco but white florals, white florals in their nasty vintage form: perineal jasmine and an orange blossom almost as nasty as what we get from Dusita’s Oud Infini (and I’d bet anything from the pissy nether lip of Pissara herself). Add to this a tropical touch of Bortnikoff frangipani—come on! Taken all together, it seems as if Moose from Yaaseen, after Maher had finished composing the fragrance, got to spike this son of a bitch with some of his Pranee 2 attar—boosting the feel of Thai elegance and doubling the quantity of florals (bubblegum-labia jasmine, peach-fuzz osmanthus) and animalics (pine-powder musk, sun-dried-piss civet, beach-scum ambergris) and woods (coconut-ghee sandalwood, nutty-vegetal ouds). For these reasons, yes, I prefer this supersaiyan form of Peau d’Orris (although likely not the regular forms) over both War and Peace and Iris Ghalia. That is saying a lot since I love these fragrances.
The tobacco really starts singing on its own in a melodramatic denouement as the scent comes to its closing hours. Picture tobacco personified, alone on a stool on the stage, singing a melancholy song—the springtime floral semen aspect, the pollen-allergen feel that was strong in the mid, is still there like spores floating all around him, but is now very faint too. The tobacco was there all along, a cigar almost—like a Wu-Banger, but instead of cocaine or crack dusted in a marijuana blunt, it was cacao powder dusted in a regular tobacco cigar. And rather than the green-colored cigar’s like the Garcia Vegas from the 90s, the cigar here is like one of those eggplant-colored ones. At the end of it all, we are left with a buttery, silken ash, slate-purple in hue.
*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.
*Very much feel that the only changes to this will be minor tweaks. I rarely feel that way about a piece. I am like Whitman—I refine forever, and even to my own detriment: the detriment of my life and sometimes even the work itself.
Tickle Theory Skepticism
Her unwanted arousal soon jackknifed into wanted enough for her command (“Get it! Get that shit! Get that fuckin shit!”) to leak through the period panties he stuffed down her throat, past the arch—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 muzzling herself into whispers, a spiritual war, and yet still—the runoff all guttural groan, gagged gibberish inadmissible to the judgment of loved ones—blocked her ears to anything beyond the gravel of neck-bulging wrath, snarling orchestration hindsight would readily neuter into “No! No!” even with all the traitorous marks against her champing flesh:
like how, hilt-greed gone cerebral, 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 squelching testimony of her gyrations; or like how the bludgeon she swung at him, sockets popping in her crazed claw for the nightstand, happened to be the Hitachi Magic they took armistice turns holding against her slop. But no, he stole back even this dangled grace of psychic deniability—yet not by pulling the panties out. Ass-fouled fingers lodged them deeper still, choking the say-anything-to-live loophole, and—eye to eye—he cut straight to decrypting that soul-tribe communique frothing—like her—beneath the torn dress of all that blubbering:
“Mmm, yeah. Knew you was a mahfuckin nasty pig! Huh? Huh?” To see herself shift like this—into bald grind work—after strokes too few—flaccid—for the alibi of orgasm, shift so far from the first pardon-window (as if this mom of two, jamming the wand button like a morphine pump until it—bogged down in the mess of lips— cycled, were less spectator, screaming to hearten the homestretch, than coach, screaming from the very first bungled drill)—how could that not square her trauma into a bucking self-revulsion unnameable even had there been no struggle to get in the mood, let alone juice out so many rounds of ceiling-fan PSI, no matter how much pill-hardened overtime her own husband put into it?
