Heating Up

I love August in Washington, D.C. Anyone with a shred of self-respect has left town. August is the month when D.C. morphs from the city JFK aptly described as having “southern efficiency and northern charm” to having southern efficiency and southern charm. It´s slooooooooow. Also, it was 102 degrees yesterday — too hot to do much besides watch the asphalt melt and eat popsicles on the porch. There are homegrown tomatoes and excellent white peaches. And there are karmic payoffs – like the doofus driving behind me in the Mercedes yesterday, honking at me all the way down the damn road because I was – get this – doing the speed limit. So when s/he blew through the stop sign right after me in a fit of irritation, s/he was greeted by the cop who sits there just writing tickets. It´s like shooting fish in a barrel. I´m all for it. That´s the intersection in front of our village store, where the kids cross, and people who are too busy to stop at that sign can bite my biscuit.

August is the month when I can write words like “bite my biscuit” on the blog, because many of you fine readers are on vacation too! I could write about anything. I could probably stick up recipes for chocolate pudding. I could put up some more photos of me on vacation.

Although now I´m worried, now that you know I´m “twinkly.” Now that you know I´m less and more

When I get older will I look like …

or or ?

When my hair´s short, people tell me I look like , which I take as a compliment even if I don´t quite see it.

If I could choose, I´d want to look like She´s still modeling and she´s still hotter than the sun.

Okay, enough of that. My nose has recovered sufficiently to delve into the wonders of Dusan´s gift packet, which I noticed right off the bat contained a vial labeled “SKANK” in all caps, which I´m thinking is that manky gross-out WET scent, and some M7. Which unfortunately was not accompanied by M7 guy, the martial-artist. Although a girl can dream…. hey! let’s go google that ad, shall we?!?? WARNING: SCROLLDOWN ALERT. STOP NOW IF YOU’RE AT WORK!

YSL M7. Are you wild for that photo? Why can´t we have ads like this in the U.S.? Think what it would do for magazine readership! Everybody loves M7. (notes: bergamot, mandarin, rosemary, vetiver, agarwood, amber, musk, mandrake root.) It’s a crime you can’t find this everywhere, just YSL Homme or whatever. In fact, maybe it´s discontinued. Anyway, I was looking forward to discovering whether M7 can rise to its reputation – whether it can go the distance, whether it measures up. Weird. It goes on all fabulous, more vetiver than citrus on me. There’s the handful of crushed herbs, then the characteristic sharp smokiness of agarwood … then poof. I can´t smell it. Clearly an anosmia issue, because if I give it 30 minutes and whiff again, there it is. It´s lovely; it’s extremely masculine, one of the few fragrances I can say I probably would feel funny wearing out of the house. It lasted all day, another plus. But to be honest, it didn´t stand a chance against the charms of…

WET. Cribbing directly from Nobi at Made by Blog: “In 2003, Terry Richardson and Dominique Ropion collaborated on a scent called ‘WET’ for Visionaire. The image which inspired the perfumer was Richardson´s photo of a woman´s breasts covered with sperm.” Well … that’s disgusting, isn’t it? But WET´s not the retch-fest that Secretions Horrifique is. It doesn´t smell like any secretions. It smells like a cross between L´Artisan Dzing! and a nice snog on an expensive leather couch. I have always been sad that I’m one of the folks Dzing! doesn’t work well on — I get more of the murky elephant-dung smell, not the delicious hay/leather other people get — but I keep trying, hoping it’ll all work out someday. (Actually, I guess I should buy my bottle now, because I believe it’s being discontinued.) WET combines a musky, sensual smell, reminiscent of Malle Musc Ravageur, with a note I’m having difficulty latching onto — it’s a lightness to the fragrance, a freshness, like rain, but not the dreaded fresh accord, adding an almost delicate aspect to a fragrance that is fairly intense. I found the scent strangely … beautiful. During the test-drive Hecate said, “Mom, can I have some of that fume? It smells really good.” Proving that: a) it´s not nauseating and b) maybe Hecate´s a freak just like mommy. Oh, I forgot – I just went back and reread Dusan´s email and WET´s not actually approved for application to skin. Bummer. I guess we´ll see whether my arm falls off. In the meantime, I decided to tart it up a bit. So I tried layering it with:

CB I Hate Perfume Musk Reinvention – you knew that´s where this was going, right? Excellent combination – the sweetness of Musk really offsets the leather in WET nicely. So then I tried…

the vintage bottle of Bal a Versailles that Hausvonstone sent me because she thinks it smells like @ss. Wow, Hausvonstone, you are not kidding! It’s only an EdC, I wonder if somebody’s hand slipped when they were adding the dirty bits to that batch?! Layered with WET, well, that’s not something you smell every day. It was a pretty epic battle — Bal started off strong, then WET came back, then they started doing the Humpty dance. The resulting combination of incense, leather, sweat and civet was extraordinary, worth taking out in the heat for a spin to get the maximum effect.  Here’s hoping all the neighborhood dogs don’t come hang around the front door.