Perfume

I have worn five perfumes in my life, or rather, “scents,” the preferred industry term. The first was My Sin, by Lanvin, which someone gave me a tiny bottle of when I was nineteen. I loved it: My Sin. It smelled of dried roses rising from ancient velvet. I carried the bottle around with me long after it was empty, like a Victorian lady’s smelling salts.

Then a friend introduced me to Anaïs Anaïs, by Cacharel, one of the signature scents of the seventies. (Another was Brut, but let’s not go there.) AA was the tempermental opposite of My Sin – powdery, girlish, spring-like. I wore it for many years and still love it, but my body chemistry changed, or Cacharel changed the formula, and now it does not last on me more than a few minutes.

One of those irritating scented ads led me to Truth, by Calvin Klein. You must always say it that way: Truth, by Calvin Klein, lowering your voice on the “Calvin Klein” part. I wore it for about four years, until Calvin Klein stopped making it. For a while I could find end-of-stock bottles on random websites – I once ordered it from Wal-Mart – but eventually even those sources dried up. Betrayal, by Calvin Klein.

Unfortunately, the end of the Truth era coincided with the beginning of my Self-Loathing era, and I could not bring myself to go hunting in department stores for another perfume. I was not worthy. I could drag myself into the local Rite-Aid, but the featured perfumes there were inspired by celebrities like Christina, Jessica, and Sarah Jessica. I was too low for J-Lo. I did consider buying one of the Olsen twins’ perfumes, but decided Mary-Kate’s bag lady persona was too close to home while Ashley’s All-American classic was too much of a stretch.

Close to desperation, I started using a perfume sample that a friend had given me -- J’Adore, by Dior. When I had first tried it, I disliked it. It was dark and lugubrious. I still disliked it, but anything was better than the stink of failure and you couldn’t say it was cheap. I was also kind of fascinated by the fact that Charlize Theron was the perfume’s celebrity rep. I had last seen her as an overweight prostitute serial killer, and that did kind of fit my mood, so I sucked up the smell for Aileen’s sake. Wuornos, by Christian Dior.

Don’t worry. I’m in therapy.

Which is how I finally gathered the courage to take a shower and head out to Macy’s to buy my next “real” scent, one that might bear some relation to who I am and might yet be. I knew what I wanted and would not be deterred. I looked like hell and I think the saleswoman felt sorry for me. It did not help that my debit card didn’t go through and my first credit card was turned down. Christ, I thought, it just gets better and better. The second card worked, and I was able to slink out of the store only mildly abashed by the clerk’s solicitous comment: “We all need a little something special sometimes, don’t we?”

Yes we do. And I have gone back to the source, the ur-scent of the modern era, to nurse my battered ego: Chanel No. 5, my parfum nombre cinq.