No, literally.

About three weeks ago, I spritzed myself with some of Ralph Lauren’s “Romance” fragrance from the same 75ml bottle I’ve had for years now, only to find it had a sickly sweet overtone to it, like rotten cardboard that’s been left in the rain for too long. It wasn’t overpowering, and I wasn’t looking to particularly impress anyone that night, but I really thought that was humorous, ironic, and metaphorical.

I bought that little glass bottle of Romance back when I thought it really, really suited me: I was going to be a writer of fiction, a poet perhaps, living in my Manhattan high rise on an intermediate floor of a hundred-story building, wearing leather dusters and wearing mirrorshades at midnight, sipping too-strong cappuccinos in all-night diners—I was going to have been through failed passionate love affairs, to know what true pain felt like, to know that I was alive, and that from the midst of my angst would come such creative bursts of energy that I would somehow transcend my isolation in that others could find solace in the company of my work.

That sophomoric dream has faded, of course. I still want to be a writer, but for different reasons. What leather dusters and mirrorshades meant to me back then I still enjoy, but only in the sense that I enjoy all the music by the Scorpions and Def Leppard—wonderful, but you can’t immerse yourself in it for too long.

So too that fragrance: the idea that a fresh, warm citrus scent could capture the essence of some Form of reality seems patently absurd now, if I ever believed that this were possible even metaphorically. It’s time to grow out of that old scent, that now-soured citrus oil, and adopt a calmer, wiser, more temperate fragrance—aye, and different dreams, aspirations, and goals as well.

At the end of an era my Romance went sour. I wonder what these next few years will smell like.

No, literally.

About three weeks ago, I spritzed myself with some of Ralph Lauren’s “Romance” fragrance from the same 75ml bottle I’ve had for years now, only to find it had a sickly sweet overtone to it, like rotten cardboard that’s been left in the rain for too long. It wasn’t overpowering, and I wasn’t looking to particularly impress anyone that night, but I really thought that was humorous, ironic, and metaphorical.

I bought that little glass bottle of Romance back when I thought it really, really suited me: I was going to be a writer of fiction, a poet perhaps, living in my Manhattan high rise on an intermediate floor of a hundred-story building, wearing leather dusters and wearing mirrorshades at midnight, sipping too-strong cappuccinos in all-night diners—I was going to have been through failed passionate love affairs, to know what true pain felt like, to know that I was alive, and that from the midst of my angst would come such creative bursts of energy that I would somehow transcend my isolation in that others could find solace in the company of my work.

That sophomoric dream has faded, of course. I still want to be a writer, but for different reasons. What leather dusters and mirrorshades meant to me back then I still enjoy, but only in the sense that I enjoy all the music by the Scorpions and Def Leppard—wonderful, but you can’t immerse yourself in it for too long.

So too that fragrance: the idea that a fresh, warm citrus scent could capture the essence of some Form of reality seems patently absurd now, if I ever believed that this were possible even metaphorically. It’s time to grow out of that old scent, that now-soured citrus oil, and adopt a calmer, wiser, more temperate fragrance—aye, and different dreams, aspirations, and goals as well.

At the end of an era my Romance went sour. I wonder what these next few years will smell like.