Remember those perfume commercials from years ago when women walked through smoky European streets after using some kind of product made by a Frenchman who likes to talk about "notes" and presumably drives a really nice car? Invariably there would be some black jaguar or spotted cheetah or SOME kind of wild cat lurking in the midst, presumably because if you use really expensive perfume it turns you into a wild, sexual creature as implied by the presence of the wild cat. I think this came to me, as all things inevitably must, as I lay on my bed clutching my teddy bear and staring at the sad remnants of my remaining Chanel No. 5 - ah, Chanel, we hardly knew ye! This perfume is really truly my favorite - and I haved loved perfume ever since my grandmother first taught me how to dab it on my wrists, one of many priceless gifts a grandmother might impart. It's a love affair that started young. The other gifts she imparted were her abhorrence of Vanna White and her love of classy TV dinners - once, in an attempt to buy something cheap, I was assaulted by my grandmother's caustic tongue. I, of course, thought that I was doing her and her limited income a favor, but my grandmother was not shy about drubbing any and all humans in her midst with her various opinions. My father, who was abused by this wonderful misguided woman, would later turn his wrath on me, and hence my many years spent rearranging knicknacks on therapist's couches mentally as they attempted (yet, not very hard, she thinks) to determine what makes me tick. I find therapy useless and the world frightening, particularly in the relentless gentrification slowly bleeding through the land. But what, you ask, in a confused and righteous tone of voice, does this have to do with perfume?
Well, now that I'm poor, I long for nice things, and this bottle is a very nice thing indeed. And I think a lot lately about things like status and power and money and racism and oppression and how it seems to me we are creating a world in which the rich will one day literally walk over the backs of the poor. In fact, it calls to mind something I saw on my telly - a picture of a naked woman covered with fruit at a party for a very wealthy celebrity. The fruit was being eaten by various guests as she lay there, supine, presumably being paid well for her time and trouble but what, I ask you, is the point of this? Other than to show off how rich the owner is and what he might do in the way of humiliating people in this manner? Truly sad, sick, and bizarre, my friends, but the world has come to this, I think, and it will only get worse. Much, much worse.
And yet I still like things - my perfume - and wild cats. And I even loved my grandmother, horrible and kind though she was, all at once (although not horrible to me - but certainly she was to my father, and so the sad cycle of abuse began). I wish for nice things. I wish for a world that is a level playing field all might enjoy nice things in - starting with a liveable wage for all. No racism, no oppression, no have and have nots, no inequality, but a place of opportunity, the place our Founding Fathers, subjugated though they were to the mores of their day, did wish to see flourish.
It's a little bit of contemplation, I guess, to garner from a bottle of perfume. But for some reason it did call to mind this last thought: how can the rich possibly enjoy their luxury unless all can enjoy it with them?
Wild cats in the jungle, roaring, demanding to be heard.
May we all be heard in this world, my friends.
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