The Air du Temps

It's just a tiny bottle. Very carefully I turned the cap off andsmoke to the contents. My favorite perfume from years ago. Lots of years. The sample bottle had once ended up in a junk box where it lost its label but kept its scent. A smell that evokes memories. It was my very first perfume, my father gave me on my 16th birthday. It was an expensive perfume, not something you could buy from your pocket money, and I was very proud of it. Almost did not dare to use it. Just the bottle with the two pigeons on the cap was a dream. Only many years later I would discover that the design for the bottle was made by the glass artist Marc Lalique, according to tradition a childhood friend of Nina Ricci.

I put on the perfume when I went to the disco with my very first love. Then another dark barn, somewhere afterwards. Along the side were some chairs and tables. In one corner there was something that was supposed to look like a bar. There you could choose from cola, 7up or cassis. There was not much more to get. In the other corner there was a table with two pick-ups, a suitcase singles, a couple of LPs and a pimply kid who switched the records. It was always waiting to see which new songs from the top 100 of the Music Express he had managed to hit the head. The enlightenment was as primitive as the rest, but as far as we are concerned it would not have needed. The slow songs were by far favorite. Then you shuffled pressed against each other a little back and forth. His nose in the The Air du Temps and mine in a mix of shampo and Old Spice. His wavy long hair was his great pride. And also a bit mine because no one else had a boy with such beautiful hair.

The great love, unfortunately, did not last. To both sadness, many years later would turn out. The scent of The Air du Temps would accompany me for years to come.

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