The Grudge is Gone

When I started dating Todd, the similarities he and I shared were not confined to just between the two of us. Our families had similarities as well, and I had much in common with his mother, much to her delight ("You always said I was the weirdest woman you knew, and now look!"). One of these similarities, however, wound up haunting me until Friday. Yes, this past Friday, the 12th of August, 2011. It has been six years.

It was an early summer evening and Bill and Trudy had come to pick Todd and me up for a double date down at the De Anza drive in theater R.I.P.). Trudy and I hug and I exclaim "Wow, your perfume is great, what is it?" and she said "It's something Bill picked out for me and I love it, I finally have a great scent. It's called Addict I think, it's by Dior." and I laughed and said "That's MY perfume! How funny that perfumes smell slightly different on different people."

But Todd was not amused. He was clearly a little unsettled and it was clear that they didn't smell all that different to HIM. "I thought that smell was familiar."

And then I realized. I smelled like his mom and reminding your sexy boyfriend of his mother is just not cool. I was going to have to give it up. My wonderful, sexy, heady, lusty musky heat wave of a scent, one that reeled in compliment after compliment after compliment, wherever I went, whenever I wore it.

 Oh, how I loved it. But there was no way Trudy was giving it up. I mean, she had spent a far longer time roaming the perfume counters, scentless and forlorn, than I had. Until the day after I realized I couldn't wear it anymore. Suddenly, I was scentless. I fell back on an old favorite, Victoria's Secret Amber Romance, which is pleasant and sexy and flirty and really delicious-smelling.

But, and no offense to all those who wear VS scents, it lacked that sophisticated air of a true perfume, that multi-layered richness, that headiness that leaves you somewhat giddy, almost intoxicated on the smell alone. And so I searched, and searched. I tried Guess by Marciano.

It was absolutely divine, but extremely weak, and would wear off only an hour or two after an application. And for the cost, it was absolutely not worth it. Sorry, Guess.

After that, I gave up. I returned to Amber Romance off and on, and switched between that and Sensual by Bath and Body Works. This is the lotion, not the body mist, but it's the same smell.

Really sexy stuff, sexier than Amber Romance but not as long lasting. Actually the lotion lasted longer than the body mist. And this brings me to current. I still have an inch or so left of the body mist, in its bottle, in my medicine cabinet.

I had picked out a couple of smells that I liked, from the sample pages in a few issues of Vanity Fair (a horrendously biased magazine but still impossible to put down), but finally on Friday I bit the bullet, I went to the counter, I picked it out, fell in love and shelled out $70 for my new fragrance. Armani Code.

I wish there was a feature on Blogger to have an audio clip of angels singing or something because that is how intensely over-the-moon, shit myself excited I am about this perfume. It's everything Addict is but different, deliciously different, with no hint of mother-in-law in its notes at all. So I can say FINALLY, after years of smelling Trudy with a wistful near-bitterness over my loss, after months of getting Alexandra back from grandma and grandpa, her hair reeking of super-awesome Addict, I can say with full sincerity and a serenity in my soul, that I forgive Trudy for stealing my smell.

I gotta new one, now.