Douleur is the Bogue sibling who came home from the circus with stories of love affairs with aerialists and knife throwers, of laying entangled, suspended in safety nets woven from garlands of roses.

There’s a sweet, decadent decay in Douleur, of too ripe fruit, bruised petals, and sweat that won’t dry. It’s perfume fit for the fleshy strength of Angela Carter’s Fevvers, but with metal talons, and a soaring lift of mint and camphor to provide a feathered illusion of lightness.

The next day, my shirt smelled like someone else had been wearing it. It took three more days, and three more wears until I placed that smell and the adventures it belonged to.

It was back when I was that dangerous mixture of woeful naivety, the immortal recklessness of the young, and the mistaken, wonderful notion that I knew what I was doing.

It all came tumbling back: an absurd night of repeated encounters and glances everywhere I went. Bar to bar, band to band, the yellow-flickering rattling hollows of a late-night subway station. (I thought it was a coincidence, fate even. It was just him following me. As I said, I was naive.) I remember my feet soft and raw, shredded by wearing heavy shoes without socks, a perfumed mustiness from a vintage dress, the stripe and prickle of mattress ticking, rucked sheets, the sharp shine of a mirror in a dark room. His salted skin like golden spun sugar, an almost burned taste, caramel softness under fingertips, the press of limbs. Smoking on the iron fire escape, flakes of paint on bare skin, breathing the uncomfortable, thrilling smells of a summer city at night.

I remember the smooth weight of his flatmate’s python draped around my shoulders at breakfast, brown sugar on french toast, condensed milk in thick coffee, borrowed lipstick, and tall tales.

Later: more drama than even a musician and a foolish teenager could handle, with ridiculous fights in the street & weeping on payphones. It was an excellent adventure, a very long time ago.

Wearing bogue profumo x @freddiealbrighton Douleur, I am the knife thrower and the rose-tangled aerialist, and all the territory is mine.

originally posted 17 December 2019