The dessert course has never been among my many vices. I can track a fresh bowl of heavily buttered popcorn from several blocks away, but the Triple Brownie Blackout cake has never called my name. Of course, I like chocolate — those people who claim not to like it always make me suspicious — but it must be very dark, and in fact, I will happily eat that 98% cocoa solids stuff with the consistency of chalk. Unfortunately, I do still drink pop, although I blame the carbonation there: I choose mineral water when it’s available. I love traveling in the U.S. because of the wide availability of brewed, unsweetened iced tea. (In Canada, if you are foolish enough to ask for an ice tea, you will likely get a syrup-based product out of a drink gun. If you can finish it, you are a better person than I am.) When I am cajoled into a dessert, ice cream or coffee bar by one of the many sugar-addicted members of my family, my first question to the server is always: “Which option would you say is the least sweet?”
This is usually my first question to a perfume sales assistant, too. I self-identify as a lover of bitter, salty, herbal and spicy smells. Looking over my fragrance collection, however, I am forced to contemplate the possibility I have been deluding myself…
For the last couple years, the term “sleeper” has made me think of 
Those obsessed with fragrance are familiar with the particular stare some sales assistants give anyone who displays a suspicious enthusiasm for and knowledge of perfumery. “It is made entirely from organic essential oils,” the sales representative might say, and when you reply: “Even the civet?” there is a look of flustered irritation. If you are a woman, the look implies you have taken too seriously the bothersome duty of pampering and perfuming your flesh. But if you are a man, things are much, much worse — you are unnatural. 
I have always been struck by one passage about love in the critic and teacher