The Tooth (Round 6)
Let's workshop this poem about how a son would prank his inebriated father, tormenting the man on physical and mental and emotional levels as a way to feel in control (in an out-of-control milieu).
scent of the day: Oud Taiwan, Areej le Dore
Here are my very scattered thoughts. This is only my third time wearing. I need much more time.
pine wood smoked into an ash / cabin vibes but non tropical northern europe / eucalyptus menthol but ashier as it dries / tauer style oud comes out industrial after first hour (but less vanillic) / the industrial and ash is s good tension with sauna vibe of opening. / Also sweetness shd florals is there too in drydiwn which gives tension with the dark black / smoked pine resin makes this amber / evergreen forest, this has a Russian musk 2 pine smell in here / right in beginning the oud is medicinal like in chineses oud / dusty old smell vintage from labdanum and castoreum and civit / tobac dore woodiness in taiwn (perhaps unstated crocodile wood here) /dark smokey leafy emerald green with subtle indolic floral, animalic extras in here boost that in here with the floral an the indole isolate /
eucalyptus camphor burnt tire in termite holed wood / a green rubber burning /boozy ash—usually booze is wet associated but here ash /fiery bitter green mushroomy spice feel to oud taiwan / black pepper plus smoke of oud makes this read like jerky (the peppercorn kind) /not to spoil it from anyone but, from afar especially, oud taiwan smells a lot like raid (but in a classier way than what we get say from a Rasasi Tobacco Blaze). / that might not deter people too much because part of the cool thing many of the art aficionados enjoy is that natural ingredients can give these smells we are familiar with / chinese medicine cabinet plus raid plus cade or smoldering juniper /tire fire put out with raid / medicinal ash/ taiwan was underwhelming at first but I needed more time with it—it is great today /taiwan is very woody, even the pine element is more like pine cone smoldering—done burning, wisps of smoke /green sweetness, smokey piney resin, black green amber /conifer forest is next to Raid chemical plant / i think this has crocodile wood, giving that tannin effect I get from Sans Fleurs/ molasses smokey green when pure oud taiwain oil comes through /
taiwan is also more menthol minty / it does last very long as a skin scent / It is much more collapsed in on itself, into a molasses goo that dries to matchstick ash in time elapse—almost like it is over blended to the point where it is hard to pick out individual aspects (usually a plus but here not as much since it is so minimal in overall effect). / It is more green and woody. / But it does add old man civet must meets used matchstick deep drydown, which is cool, and is more of a signature scent in style. / It is like Dia Man in that way, modest and minimalist but unlike dia has an aggressive aroma of Wasp and Hornet spray. / Would be the alluring signature scent of an exterminator—perhaps the one from Naked Lunch or john goodman in arachnophobia: opening is from right after work and drydown is at bar still in his jumper.
This gets defeated by Tauers L’Oudh in terms of what I prefer / It is not as burnt clutch and spent oil—the area where they overlap / but this is ways better in terms of ingredients than the Tauer and now on my third time of wearing it, it has started to impress me / unlike Inverno Russo and War and Peace, which impressed me right out of the gates, this was a disappointment like Oud Luwak and Antiquity / but now, after sitting and me coming at it anew, it is much more impressive—as I hope Antiquity and Luwak will be /
Not too confident Tauer could have done something interesting with this oud, but I think Prin could have. / My hatred for amberwoods and these beastmode autotune captive molecules pushed me to the artisanal: Pinoy, Jinx, Bortnikoff, Ensar, Areej / Im glad for the experience because it makes me appreciate the absolute mastery of early Bortnikoff whose one flaw in my book is similar to Tauer, the common base that runs through their perhaps (in both cases it is a common ambergris-incense DNA, both lovely and both very different from ine another). / And yes, it really makes me appreciate perfumers like Corticiotto, the Guerlain of our times, who could run circles around these basement egos self-proclaimed as masters / It makes me appreciate Prin too: he knows how to use synthetics to amplify and highlight the exotic asian naturals i so love in Bortnikoff. / Prin, despite the deep redundancy in his fragracnes, is still my man
Worked on section 1 today. It is an old narrative poem I want to spent some time with over the next days. I think it is good to revisit this and improve it. My dad’s death is starting to hit me a bit more.
The Tooth 1 The snap-sizz of a match, the rasp-click of a Bic—amens like these were peanuts next to the crack-fizz of a can. Five-six and balding since twenty, he would torch up a Newport 100 from the bent stump of the last—blazing through them like my thumb with the rosary he held at his wake. “Daddy’s got a fixation—an oral fixation,” he would grin at my coughs (contract via confession). But the beer bothered me most. “Daddy’s got a thirst.” My nagging tears futile, his swear-on-me promises to quit the guzzle broken too many times, a distracting thirst to fuck with my father (fierce, all my own) flowered under moonlight—just like that older thirst for Pepsi to wash down the Doritos, the Slim Jims, the Ring Dings in my transfixion before junk TV. Eyeing him for years at our kitchen-living-bedroom table, all waking hours smashed by his go-to Busch Light, could you blame me? Frisbeeing bologna, liverwurst, on his head as he snored adenoidal arpeggios in cruel oblivion on the hardwood (fist-pump bullseyes landing in minuscule splats); piling board games and phone books on his chest, his face, (cans, lit candles, cologne undulant in Jenga precarity); pinching his nose, his mouth, to silence the apneic rattle, flappy snorts and gasps that eclipsed (as if on purpose) my shouts: “Dad! Yo Dad! Go to the damn couch!” I was hooked on such sweet-caffeinated sips of prankery before tolerance set in. And I snared others into the web. My friend and I once sharpied a clown face on him— black angles sharp around the mouth and eyes like Gacy, which in the noon sun (nickels still stuck to his bare gut after his piss) I said he had drawn himself to amuse us but later, our accounting for burns turned sores, had us scrub with the green part (the only part) of the sponge. 2 Programs on Lifetime, the network he favored while building up for the floor, only refined— with their “Mommy loved me too little, Daddy too much”—the mental slant of my mischief. Lie in ambush I would, for that sweet spot just before the floor. Then with histrionic sincerity, intonation matched to an after-school-special (“Where’d you learn to smoke this reefer, Son?” “From watching you, Dad!”), I would take on a look of too-sad-to-snack dejection and go, at a commercial break, something like: “Dad, can I—? No. It’s okay. Never mind.” Eyes up at the nicotined stalactites, this would suffice to draw him in. “S’matter, Boy? Tell Daddy.” “I’m havin’—well, problems. Back home. At Mommy’s.—I, I don’t know. It’s fine.” He would have had me mute the TV, brow furrowed to match my drama, mouth slack, beady eyes befuddled, concentration quivery versus the pull of inebriation: “The fuck” (said slowly) “you talkin’, Boy?” Hands over my face, to hide chuckles and to insinuate how deep this likely goes, my go-to move would be: “Well, after—. After, he says, well, never to tell or—. I, I, I don’—.” “This fuckin’ for real, boy? Don’t tell me no lies.” “I’m not allowed to tell. Okay!? He says, if I tell, ‘it’ll break, it’ll break—our, our little secret.” “Our little fuckin’ secret!? The fuck!?” “He says it’s just for us. I can’t even tell Mommy.” “Mahfucka. Say what’s going on, Son. Mikey!” “I’m telling lies,” I would say, wiping fake tears, twisting chuckles into sniffles. “Forget it, Dad.” I would clam up at this point. He would go from sobbing to smashing his beer-can castle (“Touch my son! Kill that bitch”), back to sobbing, soon to dream murmurs despite a Newport burning his insensate pointer (hooked rigid by a steel pin until death). “It’s just—” I would say, prodding his gut to stop the throaty snores, “it doesn’t feel right. Dad, I don’t want any more ‘love games.’” 3 One weekend night, my father sat groaning about his tooth. “Gonna yank this bitch!” he repeated. “You can’t do that,” I insisted, his repetitions finally having broken through my concentration on my own consumptions. Tone roused again to after-school hyperbole, “Dad,” I baited, “you need a dentist for that.” “Shiiit! Daddy don’t need no dentist, Boy.” “Pull your own tooth? Without medicine?” Beer held high, “Pop’s medicine,” he said and sang his version of Domino’s “Sweet Potato Pie”: “I’m all fucked up and I don’t know why. Feeling kinda freaky, that’s no lie.” “No way,” I cut in. “Daddy don’t lie to his son.” A junky at ten, toying with prey (like bored housecats) was a natural response to the weakening highs. So instead of jumping right to “Prove it, then,” I fell into brooding silence, until just before uvular flapping. “I know it all,” I said, decibel for outdoors. “Stop faking. Mom told me.” His grimace again one of wobbly perplexity, “Fakin’? What shit your mom been talkin’?” “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change things.” “You idiot. Make no goddamn sense, Boy.” “I know. Okay!? You’re not my dad.” Cheeks risen, squinting out sight and baring top teeth, “What!?” he said. “Tired of these goddamn mind games.” But having had soaked in tales he would never have thought he had told me— banging wives of impotent men for pay or, key here, fresh from the Corps saving my soon mom from Chris, a biker boyfriend—I had an angle. “She told me everything. She took me to see my real dad. He’s okay, I guess. It’s more fun with you, th—.” “Who the fuck we talkin’ ’bout?” “He told me I don’t have to call him ‘Dad’ yet. I can just call him ‘Chris’ for now, or just ‘Mr., Mr. Condon.’ He took me on his motorcycle!” “Watch what you say, cause I’ll kill the bitch. Shiiit. Look at you, Boy. You Istvan clan!” “I don’t want you hurting yourself if you’re not my dad,” I said to get us back on track. His face scrunched. “What you talkin’?” “If you’re not my dad you don’t have to prove anything by, by pulling your tooth.” “I am your dad! If I love ya.” He raised the hook forever fused to that phrase. “And ain’t got shit to prove. Bitch’ll get yanked real quick, Boy!” “You sure you’re my dad— enough to pull your tooth!?” “You don’t know shiiit. Get those fuckers.” His chin flicked up to the linesman pliers on the TV. Blue-handles grease-stained (since I was the channel turner), he raised them as if at the end of a toast, “If I’m your father,” and went right to wriggling work, wrenching the molar out, long roots barnacled. Linoleum splattered red, “If I love ya!” he said.