i hope she loves it
A husky pink lady takes a walk in nature.
Dear sweet friend,
I hadn’t been shopping in forever. We were still in the pandemic but at the point where we were venturing out and starting to wear clothes again. I’m a body with thick thighs and even thicker calves, so I blow out every crotch. I was on the hunt for pants.
I asked a Nordstrom employee with a blond bob for help. She obliged and stomped off toward the stretchy denim. A few paces ahead, she turned a corner as a waft of scent pranced behind her. It caught my nostrils off guard. We had been masked for so long, so to have a scent flow through my KN95 and land in my nose nearly made me weep.
Roses. Peonies. A powdery smell laced with rhubarb, warm woods, vanilla, and incense that makes you pause mid-sentence because you need to ask, What are you wearing?
Everyone asks me that, she said. It’s Delina, follow me.
She led me to a softly lit shelf where Dee lived: a deli-pink bottle shaped like Miss Trunchbull, frilly tassels, topped with a silver sphere embedded with a tiny pink crystal at the top. The bottle was husky and had raised floral engravings.
I knew immediately. I called my husband over to sniff. Maybe it was pandemic deprivation, but he loved it too. The way it overwhelms but is also just enough. Covers up days-old body odor.
Delina was created by French perfumer Quentin Bisch for Parfums de Marly. It's a lavish, theatrical eau de parfum dripping with the opulence of King Louis XV. Powdered pink wigs as tall as can be, walls taut in chinoiserie silk, a countess hissing gossip behind a laced handkerchief, sweat-licked stable boys taming veined stallions. At Versailles, everything got spritzed daily with bespoke fragrances: the rooms, the fountains, the king. He was obsessed with smelling good, as was his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, which earned his court the title la cour parfumée, the perfumed court. Marly braids Louis’s refined nose with his other throbbing love: horses. Delina is likely named after a 9-year-old mare from his Château de Marly stables. There is no historical record of this beauty, but I know she was husky. And hot.
I told the woman at Nordstrom I would think about it, and left. Jason ended up buying it for my birthday. Nordstrom curbside pickup. I sat passenger as Jason rolled down the window when a person appeared. All of us masked. She handed him the bow-wrapped package and gently mouthed, I hope she loves it, not knowing it was for me.
But she did know something, I did, in fact, love it.
Later that year, walking near the Whitney in New York, our first time back since quarantine, we passed a storefront. Parfums de Marly. Not Delina in the window display but her same broad shoulders and hips in the hottest of pinks. Oriana. Must be Delina's cousin, I told Jason. A woman smoking against the storefront, without even glancing our way, rasped, It's her sister. I moved closer, immediately recognizing the scent. You're wearing Delina, I said. She was on a break from working inside.
Yes, she replied, been wearing it 35 years straight. Impossible because it was released in 2017, but it didn't matter. It feels eternal. (Come to think of it, maybe she said 5.) Delina embeds in your clothes and leaves a sweet tinge that transforms you into a lady. A fancy. A fancy lady faggot. I wear Dee to our gay bar’s kink night just to give the men an experience. Her scent is so femme it creates a juicy and delightful dissonance that repels the hyper-masc and anyone not interested in sensorial delight. Delina is my jument de guerre.
Last fall, I took a walk with my good friend Dylan. We collected our cameras, grabbed Delina as our subject, and set off. We caught up and complained. We've known each other since we were 18. It's our hobby to walk, make art, talk shit, and complain. So yeah, the photos are from this walk.
For you: Pixie tangerines are here at last. I like to cut them into quarters, dig my fingernail under the point of a wedge, then use my teeth to extract its almost cartoonish shade of orange flesh. Tiny, sweet nuggets from winter’s slow sweetening. Grab a handful or two if you see them.
Love!
—scotty