Maybe it’s because I have a stomach ache as I write this, but reading the ingredients of Calvin Klein Dark Obsession makes me queasy. There’s unripe mandarin, super-caffeinated guarana, green, sticky absinthe, herb-y sage, fir balsam!, vanilla and vetiver, labdanum and suede. I need to burp. A dark obsession should sound better than this, shouldn’t it?

On skin, Dark Obsession is even worse than “on paper”; it smells like women’s hairspray from the 1980s — cheap, harsh, and loaded with synthetic aroma-chemicals. How to describe such stuff as nightmares are made on* (forgive me, Shakespeare). I have a scent memory of my little sister, a true slob as a child: she is playing with her dolls, and scents as varied as plastic, soda pop, waxy “chocolate” lip gloss from the Dollar Store, and bundles of artificially-flavored “spaghetti” licorice come to mind…

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