Smells Like Middle-Age

From here to eternity.

I’ve been listening to the Perfume Nationalist incessantly this last week. I need something unrelated to any sort of “news”. I just want to be entertained. Mindlessly entertained.

A lot has happened since I last wrote to you. As usual.

My aunt, my only other relative that lives in California besides my immediate family, passed away rather suddenly. Diagnosed with cancer, and then she was gone within three weeks. It’s been a rough month and half.

It was my 45th birthday just before Thanksgiving. Any desire to celebrate went out the window. I haven’t celebrated my birthday with friends in a meaningful way in about three years or so. I had thought this would be the year I would get a group together, and maybe get hammered for old times sake. But I didn’t have it in me.

Birthdays have become more and more meaningless the older I get. Of course, it’s nice to be remembered. It’s nice to get together with family. It’s harder getting together with friends, especially around Thanksgiving because everyone is busy. I’ve come to dread birthdays simply because of coordinating. I hate coordinating. Texting people from different friend groups to somehow get together at one place, and hope everyone gets along, and it isn’t awkward—just to celebrate me. It’s too much.

My brother forced me to go out for some cocktails. I said just one, and in the early afternoon so I can get home before dark and get cozy. I was tired. But one turned into three, and I had fun.

The rest of this past month or so was spent helping my aunt, and preparing for the worst, but nothing really prepares you for death. I’m lucky I haven’t had a lot of experience with it. She died peacefully, and really, that’s all you can ask for. She was ready. I look at it as a transition, and I think so did she, so I believe having that perspective seemed to help, yet it’s still very sad for the rest of us now that she’s gone.

So, Perfume Nationalist has been a pleasant distraction during a difficult time. I follow Jack on X, but had heard him on both the Red Scare and Bret Easton Ellis pods a couple of years ago. He had tweeted recently that Knots Landing was on Prime, an 80s primetime soap I had heard him talk about and that I vaguely remembered from my childhood, but had never watched.

I started watching.

Knots Landing started the same fall I was born, in 1979. In some ways it’s a different world. In other ways, they were dealing with the same seaside, beach town crap we deal with today—derelicts and suburban drama. I feel like I’ve dated all the husbands on Knots Landing at one time or another. The cheater musician husband who’s never home. The drunk who can’t handle his liquor. The charismatic, but goofy-looking playboy.

The only one I haven’t dated is Sid Fairgate—the caring husband and father. He has his moments too, but his character all in all is a standup guy. I have a massive crush on him.

At this point Knots Landing appears as 1950s TV sitcoms did when I was a kid…very old. I like it because it was a simpler time. Seemingly wholesome, yet the transition period into the 80s that was still very much stuck in the 70s with swingers, beach bikers, and disco.

Each episode of Perfume Nationalist pairs a fragrance with a movie, book, TV show, or soap opera that it’s somehow culturally or spiritually connected with. My So-Called Life is paired with CK One. Safe by Todd Haynes is paired with Giorgio Beverly Hills. In listening to these episodes, I’m realizing I’m about 20 to 30 years behind in fragrance.

I’m not a big fragrance person. I’m actually one of those women Jack frequently makes fun of for not wearing fragrance because they gave me headaches or allergies—although, in the last couple of years I have begun buying perfume here and there. Nothing crazy. A coconut perfume from an independent boutique and Vacation’s signature perfume that ended up smelling literally like bananas (eh).

Other than that, all my fragrance references are from the 80s and 90s. I think my grandmother wore Giorgio Beverly Hills, and of course, I remember all the Calvin Klein ads from the 90s: Obsession with Kate Moss, Eternity with Christy Turlington, and CK One being the height of cool during high school.

I did work at the Robinson’s May fragrance counter during Christmas of 2000, but don’t ask me what was popular or what I liked. I don’t remember, other than maybe Obsession at the time and that Giorgio Armani was requested a lot at the cologne counter. One of my aunts gave me Dior’s Hypnotic Poison, in I think ‘99. That’s about the extent of my fragrance history.

But now, listening, I’ve become enthralled. Of course, I’m more obsessed with the nolstalgic aspect of fragrance—I have no idea what’s cool now or popular. Don’t really care. The Calvin Klein fragrances I remember, the magazine ads with the bent pages that had the scent brushed onto the paper in a sticky glue—that’s what I’m after.

I thought, maybe it would be fun to go to the Macy’s perfume counter and sample some for old time’s sake. Mind you, I never go to Macy’s or the mall anymore. It’s a dead zone. But I was feeling very nostalgic, and thought, what the hell?

So, I went this past weekend. Two weeks before Christmas. Oh, what mistake. It was not the mall I remembered. I think I’ve become some sort of yuppie, appalled by the clamoring, the busyness, the terrible attire of the shoppers. Jesus Christ, do you think you could possibly not dress like utter shit? To have some sort of decorum?

I could only find a few perfumes I recognized at Macy’s; Eternity was one of them. I sprayed it, and found it quite delightful. It’s the perfume that Jack associates with middle-aged women in the early 90s.

I thought Macy’s was bad. Then, I went to Sephora. I thought Sephora must have those old time classics. No. None of them, except for Chanel…which, I’m not sold on. But I could barely try the perfumes at Sephora before getting pushed out of the way, either by men, or sweaty, horribly dressed women. One woman, older and large, with sweat beading on her face, disheveled, and wearing cut off shorts, grinned as she squeezed in front of me and essentially blocked me from trying Coco Chanel. (I wasn’t done, you bitch). I gave up.

Sephora is a shit show. Every one looks like shit, especially the people that work there. It’s like they tell their salespeople to come in looking like they just rolled out of bed and by the way, don’t bother to brush your hair. There’s no point—I mean, this is only a store entirely based on vanity. Remember when Sephora was somewhat elevated, and clean, and the counter girls actually wore makeup and attempted to look appealing? Forget it. Those days are over. The mall is the movie, Idiocracy.

I know I sound like a middle-aged, yuppie bitch. I guess I am one at this point. I really don’t care and when I do finally buy a bottle of Eternity, I will purchase it on the internet.

---