curiosity made the cat...vomit

I've been a diehard fragrance addict since I received a Tinkerbell beauty kit as a little girl, containing a waxy lipstick, whorish pink blush, and a bottle of perfume. In retrospect, I'm sure it was cloyingly sweet and almost unbearable to anybody in a 5-mile radius, but I thought it was the most sophisticated scent ever and happily doused myself in it.

When I was younger, I always had a signature fragrance; Electric Youth and Navy when I was in high school, Liz Claiborne when I was in college, Angel for many years. But there are just too many perfumes to limit myself to just one, and now I have a collection of over 50 perfumes (including samples) that I choose from according to my mood, or what I want my mood to be, or just the first bottle that catches my eye when I open my linen closet. I'm not much of a girly girl in most ways, but I never leave the house without applying perfume first.

Now, being a dedicated "frag hag" means keeping abreast of the latest releases, and over the years, I've read about a perfume with the horrifying name of Secretions Magnifiques. It was created by a French company called Etat Libre d'Orange which is renowned for its raunchy names (such as Don't Get Me Wrong, Baby, I Don't Swallow) and unusual scents. People are sharply divided on Secretions Magnifiques; one reviewer called it "the ending scene of Eraserhead in a bottle", another claimed it was just a boring replica of ocean air, and Luca Turin, the Roger Ebert of fragrance reviewers, deemed it a masterpiece. I was morbidly curious, and felt like trying it would be a necessary rite of passage---an initiation, if you will, into the hardcore club of fragrance mavens---so when I had the opportunity to get a sample recently, I decided to just go for it.

Today, after work, the sample package was waiting for me. Inside were three gourmand fragrances (Praline Santal, Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau, and Fool for Love) and...oh yeah...Secretions Magnifiques, which came with a little drawing of an ejaculating penis.

Subtle!

Well, here goes nothing, I thought, and uncapping the vial, I applied a couple of drops to my inner elbow, which (unlike my wrists) was fragrance free.

...

...

...Friends, how can I possibly begin to describe this fragrance to you?

Imagine Dexter, the serial killer of the eponymous TV show, sneaking onto the grounds of a rich murderer who is sitting by his pool, enjoying breakfast. We'll call the other dude Patrick, just because. Patrick is alternating between spooning cereal into his mouth and masturbating idly. Dexter sneaks up behind Patrick and stabs him to death just as he reaches climax. Patrick's body and his cereal bowl tumble into the pool, and the smell of chlorine, blood, sperm, and milk all mix together into an unholy miasma called Secretions Magnifiques.

I read somewhere, or saw on CSI or someshit, that if you grin as wide as you can, you are physically unable to gag. So, grinning like the Joker, I sprinted to the bathroom and proceeded to douse my arm with rubbing alcohol and then scrub off about fifteen layers of skin. My arm is bright red, but I can still smell it oh God I can still smell it oh Jesus it's in my mouth I CAN TASTE IT IN MY MOUTH