"Where men bathed in perfume and practiced the hopes of free speech." --Bob Dylan
Landlocked for decades and then free at last, Wit did not cast eyes on the ocean until a ripe old age. In Virginia it was, and sunburned, and boy that shit is salty. I kept my eyes closed for a good deal of it, like that other first time in perhaps even deeper, warmer waters rocked by fabulous unexpected but not undesirable waves where when I went under I saw some male principle, the face of Poseidon perhaps, and salty that, too. All eyes wide open after the first plunge so as not to miss a thing.
Eau Illuminée by Parfums Del Rae dreams up something from down down the deep, light breaking on top like the aqueous arcade ceiling of one of Walter (you know, I first typed Water) Benjamin's Paris shopping alleys.
The virgin spray kicks up something fresh and cold and sudden that settles into lush bergamot and basil. There's a buyoancy and an undertow all apiece, like being taken into strong arms suddenly somehow where you hold me down and yet release everything else upward all at once. After you've been in for a while, it acclimates so that a lavender heat heart pulses, pushing the rest of the secret scents (herbs of some sort) out through the pipes of an underwater ocean organ like concupiscent corpuscles directed through vibrating veins under slobber-licked sweat skin.
Eau Illuminée is the greatest scent for men without a rose in it. It lasts a long time, and afterward it gets all sentimental before disappearing. What lingers then is feminine: orris, tonka, oakmoss and vanilla. An equivocal Eau then, like all great sensations that push-pull in a complicated and watery way. At first there's nothing to it Oh Then! it's the most powerful thing, obeying opposing principles all the way--magnets of moon and earth, rough and tender tide, constant coming and going.
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