The Scent of Dying Candles
Senses are overwhelmingly associative, aren't they? Bastards, when it comes to dead romance. You hear their voice, smell their scent or see their picture and seemingly fucking immortal synaptic connections in your brain light up and start pumping the feeling "omg" into your stomach before flooding your mind with lucid memories like a Krugeresque dream-monger.
Touch and taste would do the same but let's face it - they ain't going to let you do that, ever again.
So to kill off these connections and memories, we get pro-active right? We stop hanging out with them, stop hanging out with their mates, move away, get a restraining order placed and scratch out the eyes in their pictures before burning them and burying the ashes under a gooseberry bush. With a bit of selective sensory deprivation, the memories will die. Surely.
Culprit no. 1 in fucking over that plan is your sense of sound, because nobody can predict when the particular song that played when you first kissed is going to play in the pub and send you into a mogoloid state of weepy wtf. But you're expecting that.
Culprit no. 2, though, catches you more unawares.
"Hey it's just a bottle of perfume, I can sniff it without being instantly transported backwards in time to a place of such shearing dichotomy that I just want my brain to instruct my hands to smash itself out of my skull, drop it and hope my brainless feet will accidentally pulverise it."
It’s just a smell. Yeah, right.
Do you know that McDonalds, out of all the fucked up technological magick they do, work on their food’s smell the most? They have chemical factories the size of Kent, staffed by legions of scientists churning out tiny bottles of clear, colourless liquid that smell precisely like strawberries or pickle or beef cooking on a grill. This is because they know that - even if their food tastes like cardboard, feels like soggy tissues and looks like a smacked arse that's been set on fire and put out with a shovel - if it smells like the real deal your other senses will be clouted into submission and build an experience based on how it smells.
Out of every sense, smell is the most surprisingly and effectively associative with memory. I don’t know that that’s true, so don’t quote me in your fucking end-of-year’s. In fact, I’m not sure it can be proved either way. What I do know is that the slightest whiff of certain perfumes will give me an out of body experience unmatched by anything – reading letters, seeing a picture, talking on the phone, whatever. Some bint walking past me on the tube wearing a certain perfume can bring me to a different part of the metaverse in a single instant.
It’s almost scary.
Only a few girls I’ve dated have worn something specific, every day. Those perfumes now conjure in me something far greater than the sum of their parts. Years of friendship, emotions, sights, sounds and orgasms all brought to bear in a single go, behind the shields and point blank, on a soul that thought it forgot. And it’s not like I’m still pining for these people. I’m not, and they can go fuck themselves. But just like “that song”, their scent can reformat your brain, snap ten years off your life and cast you all the way back. Amazing what chemists, a personal preference and a bint on the tube can accomplish.
Touch and taste would do the same but let's face it - they ain't going to let you do that, ever again.
So to kill off these connections and memories, we get pro-active right? We stop hanging out with them, stop hanging out with their mates, move away, get a restraining order placed and scratch out the eyes in their pictures before burning them and burying the ashes under a gooseberry bush. With a bit of selective sensory deprivation, the memories will die. Surely.
Culprit no. 1 in fucking over that plan is your sense of sound, because nobody can predict when the particular song that played when you first kissed is going to play in the pub and send you into a mogoloid state of weepy wtf. But you're expecting that.
Culprit no. 2, though, catches you more unawares.
"Hey it's just a bottle of perfume, I can sniff it without being instantly transported backwards in time to a place of such shearing dichotomy that I just want my brain to instruct my hands to smash itself out of my skull, drop it and hope my brainless feet will accidentally pulverise it."
It’s just a smell. Yeah, right.
Do you know that McDonalds, out of all the fucked up technological magick they do, work on their food’s smell the most? They have chemical factories the size of Kent, staffed by legions of scientists churning out tiny bottles of clear, colourless liquid that smell precisely like strawberries or pickle or beef cooking on a grill. This is because they know that - even if their food tastes like cardboard, feels like soggy tissues and looks like a smacked arse that's been set on fire and put out with a shovel - if it smells like the real deal your other senses will be clouted into submission and build an experience based on how it smells.
Out of every sense, smell is the most surprisingly and effectively associative with memory. I don’t know that that’s true, so don’t quote me in your fucking end-of-year’s. In fact, I’m not sure it can be proved either way. What I do know is that the slightest whiff of certain perfumes will give me an out of body experience unmatched by anything – reading letters, seeing a picture, talking on the phone, whatever. Some bint walking past me on the tube wearing a certain perfume can bring me to a different part of the metaverse in a single instant.
It’s almost scary.
Only a few girls I’ve dated have worn something specific, every day. Those perfumes now conjure in me something far greater than the sum of their parts. Years of friendship, emotions, sights, sounds and orgasms all brought to bear in a single go, behind the shields and point blank, on a soul that thought it forgot. And it’s not like I’m still pining for these people. I’m not, and they can go fuck themselves. But just like “that song”, their scent can reformat your brain, snap ten years off your life and cast you all the way back. Amazing what chemists, a personal preference and a bint on the tube can accomplish.
 | Contradiction for Women by Calvin Klein Pure pepper, rose, satin wood and sandalwood. Back at University, approx. 100,000 arguments with a girl that was more levels of stimulation than getting blown by an angel. Lots and lots of wine and music. Total abandon. Invokes an ecliptically foreboding sense of danger in me. |
 | Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger Floral, with low notes of sandalwood and heather. Also a University smell, but much more stabilised. Summer in forests and by the sea. Her long white nightie. Eyes that cut soul. The smell of fairy tales. And trust no one. |
 | Sentiment by Escada Mandarin, iris, vanilla and sandalwood. Though I’ve never been to Paris (!) it is the smell of that place, and many bits of London too. Also the smell of Mozart and it makes me think of money. Lots of money. Mmm. Oh and being dumped. |
 | White Linen by Estee Lauder Fresh florals including jasmine, rose, berry, moss and amber. She was a northern girl. So now this reminds me of everything north of Watford. And forests. Forests are cool. |
 | L'Eau D'Issey by Issey Miyake Fresh water florals. No girl I knew wore this. But every girl should. |
 | One by Calvin Klein Amber, wood, musk and clover. What my dick smells of after a quiet night alone. |
posted by Juliet is Bleeding... | 1:14 pm
Splendid stuff, particularly the remark on Mr Klein's One. I, and indeed the whole of the Internet community will rush to add comments. It would be amusing to hear from women LIAC-ers what associations male scents have for them.
But for me:
White Linen: yes, someone from the North (Stoke-on-Trent, actually) wore this, odd I always though of it as the sort of scent mothers would wear. She dumped me, turning of course.
Miss Dior: evokes a young journalist and her North London bedsit, untidier even than mine. She drugged my drink and it transpired she had a bet with a gay friend as to which of them could bed me first. She also dispensed with my services, but burst into floods of tears when we accidentally met and I was with someone else.
White Linen? So it's not just me then. My second favourite (forget the name of the first) worn by my second favourite woman. It's far better than nearly all the others for me.
Wow. looks like you need to stay away from sandalwood and anything by calvin klien. Whew.