An $82 Candle
It’s true. This afternoon I spent nearly $100 on a scented candle I’ve been thinking about for over a year. My nose first picked up the scent in March 2017. I was making my second attempt at building a life on the west coast and I was punch drunk in love. I stayed at an Airbnb in LA’s hipster-invaded neighborhood, Eagle Rock. I spent $700 (nearly draining my bank account) on a seven-day booking in a trendy couple’s finished basement with a man I adored. They called their retreat “The Compound.” Of course this cool, tattooed, alternative husband and wife duo would be on top of their cult-culture eau de cologne game. The light, smoky, leathery fragrance was distinctive and memorable, although I never wondered where it was coming from—a candle, diffuser, etc. I guess I just assumed it was the family’s combined pheromones or something. I didn’t think to ask about it.
When I noticed it again in spring 2018, I was at my Tinder date’s apartment. Pre-sex I made small talk about how I loved the smell and recognized it from another place. Still, I didn’t take note of the brand or whether the musky aroma was coming from wax or a spray bottle. Post-sex, when I started to pick up the scent in random places, I came to associate it with my Tinder hookup and his amazing dick game—so much that by the third time I went to his place I made it a point to narrow down which of his small candles was releasing this distinctive scent and jot the name down in my phone. At that point I felt like Le Labo’s Santal was following me everywhere I went in Los Angeles. I noticed it in crowds at flea markets, in bars. Even my manicurist wore it. When I detected it on customers at my job I used it as a conversation starter. At one point I wandered into Le Labo at The Grove to find it. I didn’t make a purchase though, because I was turned off by the perfumer’s snobby reaction to my not knowing there were two versions of Santal: 33 and 26; one for the body and one for the home.
In October, months after the Tinder dude stopped talking to me, I sniffed it out at an Arctic Monkeys concert and my eyes welled with tears. Something about the combination of live music, the early autumn breeze, and the notes of the fragrance made me emotional. I started to associate it with things that were out of my reach: 1. my crush with good dick and 2. an apartment in which I could place a scented candle (at the time, I was still living in an Airbnb.) The elixir made me ravenous. Despite its ubiquity it felt like an opulence reserved for a life that was out of grasp.
Fast forward to September 2019 and I’m sitting outside at a restaurant in Silver Lake having a celebratory birthday breakfast for my younger cousin. At the end of our meal I noticed a Le Labo laboratory across the street. Now was the time.
Years removed from my first encounter with the scent that enchanted me, I was ready to claim it. I marched into the perfumery with thousands of dollars in my checking account, an apartment with a lease in my name, and knowledge of the difference between Santal 33 and 26. I didn’t know how much it would cost but I was fine with paying whatever.
Now, each time I purchase Santal 26 the $82 price tag is worth the utter joy it brings me for the approximate three weeks it takes to burn to the bottom of the glass before I have to replace it again. It might seem like a frivolous purchase, but for me it’s more than a luxury splurge. It represents my growth and triumph in overcoming a tumultuous, uncertain chapter in my life. It’s the mark of a fresh, cedar-amber-sandalwood-coco-vanilla scented beginning. It brings me unprecedented pride…and that’s priceless. 🖤
