Legacy of a Slutty White Boy

"You are now entering the harmonic realm."

The year is 2003. I am a slutty white boy. 

It's my freshman year of high school and I'm not nearly nervous enough about my first homecoming dance. See, my grandmother managed the men's suits section of a JCPenney's which meant that, despite being a very resource deprived youth in the midst of both broken home and poverty, I had access to a free suit. You heard right, that gangly blonde kid that always wears the same unironic Hot Wheels hoody is going to homecoming in style. 

One of my grandmother's underlings felt me up with a tape measurer as I watched on with glee. That's right, peasant, a 36 inseam. Write it down. Wait, not even a compliment on my extraordinary height? My vertical leap is astounding, sir, clearly you're intimidated, sir. Or clearly I'm fourteen years old. 

My life cut down to inch markings on a piece of paper, he made his way off to whomever is next up on the ladder of not being impressed by my growth spurt. A tailor? Maybe a tailor. Someone with access to knowledge and tools arcane and mysterious. 

I eagerly awaited my first truly luxurious item. Time moved far too slowly in the interim. I was reading The Lone Drow, the newest in a long line of edgy books by R. A. Salvatore, trying to cultivate some degree of patience but, in the end, I was a teenager. A stupid little ball of horny impatience.

My first ever girlfriend is aware of my soon-to-be opulent self but, somehow, doesn't seem to care. At that age, neither of us was quite so aware of just how poor I was. This was routine. Just a weird kid being raised by his grandparents in the suburbs of Cleveland excited, for some reason, about a suit.  

I knew I was going to be fancy for the first time ever and that was enough for me. And when it arrived, and oh did it arrive, I looked like... maybe not a million dollars but certainly more than the five bucks I normally appeared as.

'Nick, what in oblivion does this have to do with fragrances', I hear you probably not once shouting at the monitor. Don't worry little dog, I've got you.

See, way back when, in the springtime of my slutty existence, my only exposure to fragrance had been a singular gift box of 'Curve' I was given by my aunt. It smelled young, stupid, uninformed, derivative, bullshit, more synthetic than a Tupperware™ party and I fucking loved it.

While the rest of my peasant friends were still spraying on an entire can of axe in the locker room, I was spritzing way too much of my secret weapon. Hells I even used the shirt that came with the gift set as my gym shirt. I was flexing in ways I didn't understand. I was young. I was stupid. I was a slutty white boy. This was my genesis.

Oh green world, don't desert me now.

At the time, my biological mother was dating a crackhead. This wasn't news, this wasn't special, no one was rushing off to the plain dealer and stopping the press. This model of crackhead was called 'Eric'.

Eric was, like most literal crackheads, absolutely out of his mind. He stalked the house in military fatigues with a replica Beretta M9 BB gun, running some strange drills against enemies unseen to the normal unanointed eyes of everyone around him.

What Eric lacked in primary faculties, fine motor functions, and ambition, he made up for in his love for the world fragrant.

Crack smells. It smells really bad. Like a tire fire localized to a small room. Because of this, some crackheads take to wearing very strong fragrances to try and mask smelling like a mad max movie.

His particular brand of scent stealth was 'Very Sexy for Him' by Victoria's Secret.

I only found this out on the night of my freshman homecoming, as I rarely got within smelling distance of him after the first few instances of “Oh holy shit, he smells like turpentine and dead dreams.”

That night, though, he had some lucid moment of recognition. Something reminded him there were others around. Maybe it was my grandparents eagerly taking pictures of my date and me in the living room. Maybe it was the noise. Who can say? What’s certain is that he wanted to be included in the merrymaking

This time, instead of creeping about with a BB gun and taking potshots at nothing at all, he came armed with that plump little bottle from Victoria’s Secret.

He didn’t even give me a chance to say no. He simply grabbed my wrists and sprayed, told me to look up, and hit my neck.

The smell was instant and intoxicating. I had never smelled anything like it before.

My father was a firm wearer of Drakkar Noir. My grandfather wore Brut. I wouldn’t recommend either. Going from those two and Curve to Very Sexy for Him was like backing out of the driveway in a rusty 1992 Cavalier and suddenly piloting a space shuttle on the way to Mars.

I was gobsmacked. I was in love. If not for the fanfare of homecoming night, I would have forgotten there was anything else in the room but myself and this fragrance.

We can gloss over homecoming. This post isn’t about homecoming. If you must know, I danced and got a lot of glitter on me. There you go.

Not long after that night, crackhead Eric ran off with a few friends on a massive bender and was arrested for god only knows what. They split up, and he left most of his possessions with my mother: the fatigues, the BB gun, and holy shit, no way, the bottle. The bottle of Very Sexy for Him.

I claimed all three for myself, but I only needed one of the triad.

This was it. I was soon to be made a king, and I was holding the cast of my crown.

I was already known among my friends as “the one who smells good,” as well as “the one who plays way too much Neverwinter Nights,” and “that guy needs to stop cutting his own hair.” This, though? This elevated that status to heights unimagined.

I drained that bottle to the very last drop over the course of the next three years, running out just before I left for college. There was a hole left in my heart. There was no way I could go back to Axe Body Spray after that.

You know November has come when it’s gone away. It had gone away.

At the time, I was working at Bath & Body Works and had access to other fragrances. The Elixir line was pretty good, but it came nowhere close to filling the position. Fortunately, working there also granted me access to a discount at Victoria’s Secret.

I made my way there, ready to purchase another bottle, and… it was gone. There was nothing.

“It’s out of stock, and we’re not sure when, or if, we’re going to get more.”

They never did.

The scent was discontinued and replaced with VS Platinum, which smelled like something wearing the ripped-off, half-rotted face of Very Sexy for Him.

That day, I made my way around the mall, stopping in at various stores where I could leverage friends’ discounts. I landed at Abercrombie & Fitch after several lackluster scents at Macy’s and JCPenney’s. See: grown-up smells.

There it was. My replacement. Fierce.

Was it Very Sexy for Him? Absolutely not. Was it close enough? You bet.

Just in case they planned to discontinue it, I bought three bottles and squirreled them off to college with me. Call Todd Howard, because it just worked.

I had other fragrances, sure, but this was an ally. The rogue knight called in to replace my bannerman.

We can discuss those other fragrances another time, because this is a post about something specific.

See, the year is 2007. I am a slutty white boy. And I am about to be robbed.

During my first winter break, I left most of my possessions in my dorm room. Of course they’re safe, right? I mean, they would have told us to take things home otherwise.

I returned from break to find an absence. The silence made by something that once made so much noise suddenly being snuffed out.

My guitar, my amp, my Xbox 360, most of my games, gone. My favorite suit jacket, my only suit jacket, gone.

As wild as it is, twenty years later this is still difficult to write. I can’t tell you how much it hurts having so little in life and then having it taken away. I worked a long time to save up for my Stratocaster. I used some of my graduation party money for that Xbox. And that suit jacket? It was the very same one I wore to that freshman homecoming. And it was gone.

And so were the two bottles of Fierce I left there.

I did manage to get back a lot of it. Most of it had been sold to a local exchange store, but the amount of time it took to recover everything was astounding. I got the Xbox back right away, as the data hadn’t yet been wiped. My account was still there, but most of the games and peripherals I never saw again.

The guitar had my band’s icon burned artistically into the body, and I had photos to match. It still took until my second year to get it back. The amp came with it.

Those bottles of Fierce, though? Gone.

I was far from the only victim. All roads pointed either to my RA or to janitorial staff, but the only person with access to the seller’s information was the employee who purchased everything. Conveniently, many of the items hadn’t even been properly entered into the store’s database.

I’ll save you months of time and mystery: nothing was solved. The best theory was that someone had purchased the goods from the thief and had an arrangement with the employee, who was fired but couldn’t be charged with anything beyond being very bad at his job. I don’t buy it, and neither should you.

I had the big ticket items back, and that was good enough for me.

Unfortunately, this left me smelling like a normal human, and that would not stand.

I had a few other scents to fill the gap by then. Nothing close to Very Sexy, but I was growing. I was maturing. I had a bottle of Pi and Elixir Red from Bath & Body Works that served me well in my transition from angsty teen to try-hard adult.

Still, I wanted something truly sexy. Something for date nights. Something for gigs, slutty enough to match the energy of the venues.

So I went looking again.

“But Nick, why didn’t you just get more Fierce? Why didn’t you address that?”

Because I’m either very good or very bad at buildup and pacing.

IFRA. The International Fragrance Association. This may come as a shock to some of you, but IFRA standards frown upon fragrances that cause permanent, irreversible damage to the endocrine system, reduce sperm count, and increase the potential for sterility.

Yep. Fierce, indeed.

The key component that made the fragrance truly pop was also doing damage to young men the world over. So what’s a company to do? Reformulate.

And they did.

And Fierce became all bark and no bite.

Turns out that even slapping an incredible set of abs on the bottle couldn’t return it to glory.
My hunt continued.

The year is 2011. I am a slutty white boy with a diploma.

At this point in time, I had assembled a small militia of about ten fragrances, but nothing had truly matched the energy I was always hunting. I was growing as a person and my tastes were maturing, but god damn it, I still wanted to smell like a good slut now and then.

Enter Yves Saint Laurent L’Homme.

Me, oh my. My, oh me. Where have you been hiding? The genetics were there, but it was missing a few chromosomes. It was good. Better than Fierce, but Very Sexy still stood atop a mountain, spitting down at its pretty face.

The year is 2013. I am a slutty white boy with student loans.

One purchase of Acqua di Gio later, and I was left disappointed, despite my friend’s insistence that it smelled “exactly like you did in high school.”

Fuck you, Paul. I smelled amazing in high school. I was a refined slut, not whatever low-class skankery this was.

The year is 2015. I am a slutty white boy with three jobs.

…Maybe I was too harsh on Paul.

Paul’s place of work will be kept a secret, but it rhymes with “why do things cost this much’strom.” Things fell off the truck a lot when Paul was managing, and he would often give his friends free or severely discounted bottles.

That year, Paul’s offering was a little fragrance called Aventus.

By the Nine Divine, this was close to what I was looking for, but there was simply too much pineapple. Was it slutty? Oh yeah, it was slutty. I still keep it in rotation for when I want my wife to follow me through the house, floating like a cartoon character toward a freshly baked pie.

Sexy, yes. But it still. Wasn’t. Very Sexy... for Him.

The year is 2017. I am a slutty white boy dating too many people.

The barrage of poorly filmed Johnny Depp commercials finally got to me. I ordered a cheap bottle of Sauvage off the interwebs. Why not smell like an aging actor who dresses like a pirate both in and out of films?

Why, you ask? Because it, while sexy, maybe even quite sexy, isn’t Very Sexy for Him.

It is good, though. I kept trying to find something in the same area as Very Sexy for Him. Sauvage is in the same city, but it’s definitely more than a few blocks away.

The year is 2018. I am a slutty white boy with good credit.

Dylan Blue was Paul’s final offering before departing the fast-paced world of department store management.

It’s good. It’s really good. Like someone wrapped a gold bar in a peel of grapefruit, smacked you in the face with it, and then gently blew ground bergamot directly into your nose. It smells incredible, and it’s oh-so close to the vibe… but not the smell.

You see the pattern forming by now. While not Very Sexy, Dylan Blue is still one of my all-time favorites.

The years went by, though. Kenneth Cole Black. Another bottle of Pi. Lacoste. My hunting days seemed behind me.

…

The year is 2026. I am a slutty white boy, and I’m married. And the world is screaming.

Everything  sucks. The world is on fire. Staying positive has become something people tack onto their chore charts. It’s difficult to find solace in anything right now. I’m rarely one to dive deeply into nostalgia for comfort, and yet here I am.

Once again, I’m on the hunt to capture the scent that started this whole journey. I’ve sought out ancient bottles of Very Sexy, which now require a second mortgage to afford on eBay. That’s not an option.

Next on the list was scouring every corner of the internet, looking for scent bridges, jumps from point to point, anything that might get me closer to the original. Before they removed the spermicide, Fierce had been very close, so I began searching for scents similar to Fierce as well.

Today, that search has brought me to Legend by Montblanc.

Touted by many online as an updated, more mature iteration of the original Fierce, it sounded like a logical choice. The price point didn’t hurt either.

I just opened the box six hours ago.

Montblanc Legend: The Cologne Equivalent of Being 'A Catch' on Paper
Montblanc Legend wants you to believe it’s dangerous. The bottle is black, curved, glossy, posing like it just finished a brooding photoshoot for a men’s magazine that hasn’t existed since 2012. You spray it expecting a scandal. What you get instead is a firm handshake and a reminder that parking is validated.

The opening is citrus and lavender, crisp and polite, the olfactory version of a man who says 'actually' a lot but means well. Pineapple leaf flickers in briefly, teasing you with the ghost of Abercrombie Fierce, like a memory of reckless youth glimpsed through frosted glass. Then it retreats, embarrassed by its own enthusiasm.

Here’s the problem. We all know what this could have been. Fierce wasn’t subtle. Fierce was a war crime in a mall. Fierce kicked in doors, ruined reputations, and left pheromonal fingerprints on furniture. Legend, by contrast, disinfects the crime scene. It takes that same DNA and files down every sharp edge until HR approves it.

The heart rolls in with oakmoss and coumarin, which should feel earthy and slightly indecent. Instead it smells like freshly laundered ambition. This is not the scent of a man undoing buttons with his teeth. This is the scent of a man explaining his 401k matching plan over appetizers. Mature? Absolutely. Sexy? Technically. Slutty? Not even a little. This fragrance would ask consent before flirting with itself.

The base tries. Tonka and sandalwood warm things up, but it’s the kind of warmth you get from a cardigan, not a body pressed too close in a dim room. There is sweetness, sure, but it’s a domesticated sweetness. Housebroken. Neutered. If Fierce had that infamous chemical bite, that unholy “what is happening to my brain” edge, Legend swapped it out for emotional availability and a decent credit score.

Projection is safe. Longevity is fine. Compliments will happen, but they’ll sound like “you smell nice” instead of “what are you wearing and why am I suddenly making bad decisions.” This is a fragrance that gets nodded at approvingly, not chased down the street.

Montblanc Legend isn’t bad. That’s the most savage part. It’s good in the way a well written resume is good. It ticks boxes. It behaves. It will never embarrass you. It will also never ruin anyone’s evening in the best possible way.

This is a scent for men who want to be desired in theory, not devoured in practice. It’s for date three, not date one. For candlelit dinners, not stolen glances in elevators. For men who want to smell respectable while cosplaying danger.

Legend doesn’t seduce. It reassures.
And sometimes, reassurance is the real tragedy.
Sexy? Yes. Very Sexy... for Him? Nope. Miles away. Definitely down the street from Fierce, though.

If anyone has any recommendation that will drive me closer to that original sin that is Very Sexy, please, I beg you, comment. Message me. Smoke signal- whatever you have to do, do it. Get that message to me. 
Stay safe and stay hydrated. 

In these demon days we're so cold inside. It's so hard for a good soul to survive. You can't even trust the air you breathe 'cause mother earth wants us all to leave. When lies become reality you numb yourself with drugs and TV. Pick yourself up, it's a brand new day. So turn yourself around, don't burn yourself, turn yourself.
Turn yourself around to the sun.