Queer Yearning and Perfume
I'm proud to be full of yearning and rage, as my queer elders taught me to be!
On the planes to and from my last trip I only watched romances - Red, White, and Royal Blue, the new Sydney Sweeney Movie, then Before Sunset and Before Sunrise (on June 16th, the day the characters met, no less!). It was a perfect decision, in my opinion. It made me think of how little pride I feel this month, which is supposed to be Pride Month, filled with celebrations of queer identity, but that I am filled with a lot of love and yearning and rage and these things make me feel very alive, very mortal, very observant of the world around me as it crumbles. I mourn the detritus and the ashes. I don’t know any queer person who feels more pride than rage and yearning this year. And all this made me self-reflect and think of three things in particular:
The woman who called gay bars for 14 years:
The retired Colonel who came out in his obituary, after 85 years,
This poem by rebecca perry from beauty/beauty:
I used to live by final girls and horror movies; now all I want is romance and the catharsis of a foolish confessional when you risk everything, would do anything, your heart held up to somebody else, pulled right out of your chest.
When I’m writing most things, I’m writing to fill the static on the line of the phone for that woman, Miss Informant, wanting so badly to invite her in. That yearning - it’s bone deep, deeper still, isn’t it? I hope she was celebrated when she walked in the door the first time, decades later, if she ever did. I hope it felt like homecoming.
Queer love, queer life, queer desire: I remember these experiences like notes of fragrance, linking memories to parts of skin and love and moments of such clarity that sometimes reality feels second best. I remember so clearly being smitten with a girl for the first time and memorizing the smell of the realization, the terror and glory of it, the chaos and indecision - when to kiss her? I didn’t know what to do with my hands, I felt like I was growing out of my skin. I remember every time that has ever happened. Cities become landmarks of this: here, in the rain, in the East Village, glasses fogged up by the weather and breath and laughter. And I remember the smell of leather jackets and hair bleach and neck, and knowing how I was so new to this that it felt like I invented it. The moments before these notes - they were my static. Excruciating! I cannot imagine fourteen years of it. And the obituary of the man who came out after death. He had love he kept private for more than 15 years. To have static as your atmosphere makes death seem like a ballroom you can finally let loose in. We deserve better than to only look forward to what happens after death. Don’t we? Doesn’t everybody?
I remember waiting for dates in Union Square’s Sephora, sniffing bottles to see what I might bring my crush, like a crow bearing gifts. What would they like to wear, what would they like to smell on my skin? Anything to get closer to them. I used to be so afraid of even holding hands; it felt so dangerous. For many people, it still is. Their static - it’s getting louder, isn’t it? Perfume, in the days of my own early fear, it was a method of shy seduction. It was a way to accept that it was ok to want something and someone and reach out for them, invisibly, and the smell - it is its own kind of ravishment. The discovery and the delight - what is easier to say to a hot girl than “God, you smell delicious?” And to see them flush with smug pleasure, because they know it, and it was planned.
I shy away from smelling the wrists of cute strangers now who smell good; afterwards, I feel too compelled to ask what we are - it’s silly, isn’t it. But it’s like you give yourself away to them a little. The point: curiosity, seduction, prostration. When someone smells delicious and permits you to explore that, a fantasy gets bigger, more dimensional. It’s declarative. It’s a devotional.
I don’t wear perfume at home with my partner - isn’t that the funniest, after all this rambling - to note that. Out of the many, many bottles and vials I own, they still ultimately prefer the smell of me just freshly showered, over every single perfume I own. I have asked for their feedback for months on different samples and perfumes I get sent and still, they’re happiest when there isn’t any static between us, no notes fictionalizing who I am, no invented stories of smell - just who I am. I still wear perfume when we go out of course: my love of perfume isn’t something I’d sacrifice for them. I compromise by bringing my fragrances to a window when I spray them now, so they don’t fill up the home.
When we visited Grasse this month together, I bought them a perfume from one of the oldest perfumeries there. I am amused that I did a multi-week trip surrounding perfume and the only full-sized fragrance I got was for my partner, not myself: but they have only worn one single fragrance for many years, so to find one they even like to incorporate into our mutual collection is a singular experience. It is definitely not one I would ever wear myself: a chypre floral, rose and blackcurrent. Princess Pauline - here is the fragrantica profile. I hate the smell of most rose notes on me. But on the person I love? Transformative. Yearning: queers, I suspect that we invented it.
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On the theme of queers, yearning, and time:
On perfume:
EU fines IFF for obstructing investigation of suspected fragrance cartel | Reuters - I would write long on this but I have about 17 other things I have to do. Alas.
I enjoy
’s overview on the history of body splashes over at her newly launched Substack
And I will leave you with this paragraph, which made me go immediately check out this book from the library myself:
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There are just one or two remaining seats left in the summer round of Perfumed Pages, by the way, and I’ve locked in one niche perfumer to join every smaller cohort of writers/cross-disciplinary creatives, which I’m thrilled with. PP Summer will be a 9-week self-guided generative container for perfumers and writers both - I’ll be joining each workshop as well and working on things alongside folks. The container begins July 1st.
I won’t have the capacity to do another Perfumed Pages workshop for many months after this so I hope you can join if you can! And I’m still doing book bundles ad-hoc as requested, which you can learn more about here.
Much love,
Arabelle