Buying Perfume

  • January 21, 2005
  • James Skemp
  • prose

She was an attractive woman, quite attractive in fact. She was the kind of girl that you couldn’t help but smile at if she gave you her eyes, even if you were having one of the most shit-filled days in your life up to that point.

She walked over, not quickly, but not slow. It was a perfect pace for a girl in her profession. If you move to quickly, you make the customer think that you’re desperate, while moving too slow gives off a feeling of disinterest, or boredom, both of which scare a customer away, or instil a like sensation within them.

No, she was moving towards me just right.

“I see you’re looking at the Don Pierre.” She was quite right. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

I replied that I was not with a ‘no’ and a sheepish grin. Could I date her? Probably. That’s what you start asking yourself, the older you get. You now longer wonder how old a girl is, you just wonder whether you could date her. Of course, it was important to keep in mind that this answered the question of whether she was legal, since you based your answer not on ‘would you date her’, but rather ‘could you date her’.

So, I could date her, so she was around my age. But, women do have this way of making themselves look younger than they are. She could pass as 18, but she could be in her semi-late twenties. Semi-late? Hmm. Women will do that to you – women aren’t known for their rationality, rather for their sensuality.

Anyway. “Who’s the lucky lady?” I knew she was going to ask so when she did it was surprising that it took me by surprise. Duh, of course she’s going to ask.

“It’s for me.” That’s what I should have said. She probably would have taken it as a joke, if I said it jokingly. Maybe I had screwed up and was scouting about. Maybe it was an anniversary, and I loved the smell. Maybe I just loved the smell.

One of those is the right idea, which I suppose makes the other the right idea as well.

Anyway, again I say, I just smiled sheepishly once more. That opened it up for what I could answer quite a bit. Now it could be a gift for blood. Maybe that was the wrong answer, but the other options were just as bad.

Not like I have a chance with this women before me. She’s attractive and doesn’t appear to be a bitch. That means she’s either got a boyfriend, she has her eye on some guy who she hasn’t yet, or can’t, attain, or she’s not interested in a relationship at this time. She could also be a lesbian, not to discount the validity of that path by one iota. There’s no other reason for an attractive women, who isn’t a bitch, to not have a boyfriend. Well, it could be that every guy that wants to ask her out can’t because they all think that she’s either one of the above, or way out of their league.

So, she could be single.

“Excuse me. May I buy you dinner?”

Yeah. Like that’s really going to happen.

Hmph. All this ‘stuff’ going through my head, all while I’m standing at the counter trying to pick out some perfume.

Ah, now the title makes sense. First it maybe sounds a little sensuous. “Oh, it’s a story about the narrator meeting a stripper with really nice perfume. After falling in love with her – obviously someone never watched Moulin Rouge!, or didn’t get it – he buys her perfume, takes it to her one night, but sees her dancing for someone else. In a fit of sorrow, he shatters the perfume bottle and stabs his eyes, pushing them out of his skull, like one would push a clam out of it’s shell.”

No. Sadly, this story is far less interesting, less bloody, will not discuss massive amounts of skin, and is far more sickening. You see, I was out shopping for perfume merely because I had ran out that very morning.

I don’t wear the perfume; I just buy it and spray it about. There’s a song from many years ago, about a ‘junk food junkie’. This song says that the junkie would hide in a closet and eat his junk food, while in public he would eat only natural foods. My habit is quite similar.

You see, many years ago my heart, some would say my soul, perhaps my mind, finally ‘shattered like a glass goblin’. If you’re familiar with the Harlan Ellison story titled this, then you’re aware of what I mean. If you’re not familiar with the Harlan Ellison story, then chances are you either know what I mean, or will know what I mean, very soon indeed.

I can’t quite remember when it was, and chances are it was not one moment, but rather a gradual process. Not a shattering, but a disintegrating, as the mountains slowly erode away.

So, I had taken to buying perfume, as if I was buying it for some lucky lady, hiding it away, and, when I knew that I was alone and would not be caught, going into my closet and spraying a fine mist in the air before me, so that I could dip my head into the cloud of scent.

Sad, indeed, but it is who I am, by what I have been.

So that is why I could not answer the young woman who was helping me make a purchase. If I told her the truth, could I honestly expect her to not laugh and not look horrified? No. If I told her, or anyone else for that matter, I, gentle reader, would be introduced again to a feeling that I am quite aware of, for we have met before.

So I leave this tale to you. To those who read this and are male – beware that you do not become what I have become. To the female – see how your kind treats some of us. We that are like this cannot help it – we’ve been created by experience in such a way that we are who we are. Yet, beware too, for a love-stricken man is much to fear…

Ah, but love is a horrible beast, no matter what Dante and the rest may say.

Notes

Modified: February 5th 2005