The Scent of Success

Picture this. I'm supposed to meet Biker Boy at the Neiman Marcus fragrance counter at the downtown store. I get there a bit earlier than he does, so I start looking at shoes. Because - shoes. But, let's back up. It's a cold, wintry, February day. I'm wearing my winter coat. It's a purple puffy down coat. Oh, and don't forget my hat. It's purple, too, with ear flaps and a purple pompon on top. It's Neiman Marcus. As I pick up the $545 Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes in patent leather (oh, god, I think I'm going to cry just thinking about it), I could feel the eyes of the saleswoman on me. I can imagine her thoughts, "what's that overgrown five-year old doing touching those awesomely beautiful, capable of inducing orgasm by sheer wonder, incredibly shiny shoes?" Then, I spy Biker Boy coming up the escalator. I put the shoe down, pet it sadly, and walk over to the boy, and kiss him on the cheek. But I want you to note that Biker Boy is at his absolute dapper best. He has on an overcoat, nice slacks, and is freshly shaven!! Goodness. What's he doing hanging out with trash like me? And that's what the saleswomen were thinking too.

Anyway, back to the fragrance counter. When I first started to date Biker Boy, lo those many years ago, his signature scent was Helmut Lang's Cuiron Pour Homme. It was delicious. But then, Helmut Lang sold out. He up and decided that fashion was no longer his fate and sold his label to Prada (damn you Helmut!). Prada made some lame declaration that the Helmut Lang label was not profitable and discontinued all the collections, including (imagine my horror) the perfume collection.

Okay, fine. Damn you Helmut! But then the journey began to find Biker Boy a new signature scent. It couldn't be available in mainstream stores, though, because that was too common. The boy read reviews of fragrances at Basenotes. The boy read me reviews from Basenotes. I learned, from trip after trip to fragrance counters that you smell coffee beans between fragrances to clear your scent palate. How do I even know the term scent palate? This was never part of my world until Helmut Lang left me (damn you Helmut). Biker Boy stalked the fragrance counter at Neiman Marcus, doing his best to score free samples. He would email companies how much he loved their products to try and get free vials of perfume sent overseas. He would pay for samples.

The system was that he would try a scent first. Then if he decided that he liked it, he'd wear it for me. But he'd generally have one scent on his left wrist, one on his right wrist, on one on his neck. This led to some pretty classic moments.

Once, upon leaving a Macy's store, I leaned over and said, "I think you put too much on." Everyone stayed away from us on the train. And so my hatred of Gucci pour Homme began. The scent of Gucci stayed with me for weeks. It was on my bag, it was on his coat, it was everywhere. It wouldn't go away. And it was awful.

But I don't want you to think he just goes around sampling and never buying. I love Jo Malone's Black Vetyver Cafe and convinced the boy to buy it even if he doesn't love it (it doesn't have staying power and it's not unique enough, he says). He got some other scents and I'm a bit ashamed because as I started to write this, I realized I don't know their names. There is another vetiver scent, a rose scent (I'm not kidding that when the boy wears this scent, I am instantly transported to a rose garden outside an English manor estate on a damp morning in the 1800s), an iris scent, and some really crappy incense scent (oh, those Catholics, they never get it out of their system). But Biker Boy is not satisfied. He wants a signature scent. So the drama continues.

He recently went to a conference in Las Vegas. (Biker Boy suffered from some severe overstimulation in Vegas and when I picked him up at the airport, he immediately got into my truck, turned down the radio, instructed me not to say a word, and after a silent ride to his apartment, he said, "isn't the quiet wonderful?") He became quite obsessed with the designer shops in Las Vegas (see above: dapperly dressed man hanging out with grown woman wearing a hat with a pompon) and found a Hermès store where he was able to score a good deal on a set of four Hermès fragrances that were boxed together. We have started the process to determine if one of these could be the boy's "signature scent." (And may I just add that the packaging when you purchase something from a Hermès store is approaching the level of beauty of those Blahnik Mary Janes?)

What all of this means to you is very little. But to me, it means I must troop across Minneapolis tomorrow to meet the boy at a fragrance counter to see if I like his new scent.