A perfume for the life I don’t have
You can’t say #HighlightOfMyYear without people looking at your cheekbones
My resolution for this tentative year in Australia was almost complete: ‘Finding a job and looking like a serious person’.
Finding a job? Check.
Looking like a serious person? Well…
Like a teenager at the local mall, I tried to find my true self via free perfume samples.
Growing up in the mountains meant I had to wait for school trips to bigger cities to visit a department store. But now I was in Melbourne. The Big Smoke!
Capitalistic architecture and city planning were top-notch down under. There were two major department stores on a single open street mall and train stations that were also multi-level shopping centres. Chef’s kiss.
Walking into beauty department stores, I could never resist the glistening temptation of sleek, fancy, or mysterious perfume bottles. I’d come out every time smelling like someone else.
Upon empirical studies, it was evident that perfumes offered four personas to pick from:
An ethereal romantic woman frolicking in clouds and flowers
An enchantress sensually emerging from a sea of gold
A grunge chic girl, with perfect red lipstick, running away in the night
A grotesque mix of all pop stars who launched perfumes. A pink fluffy crystal girl of sorts
Wearing Juicy Couture, I was none of them, and trying on a perfume advertised for a type of girl completely different from who I was felt like a life hack. Some may call it a real-life The Sims ‘motherlode’ cheat code. Others call it manifesting.
To achieve part two of my resolution, I believed I had to spritz-spritz-walk into a cloud of perfume every morning before work, hoping to channel a confident alter ego that would quiet my inner saboteur.
I even got a Fitbit, which has nothing to do with being cool, but made me feel like I had places to go and things to do.
Scratch that. It didn’t ‘make me feel like’. It kept telling me to move-move-move like I was in a dystopian parody of Full Metal Jacket.
My feelings toward this passive-aggressive object, also called Fitbit(ch), had drastically changed in mere weeks. Great birthday present idea, horrible digital execution. Imagine if we lived in a world where portable health monitors had Artificial Intelligence inside and could have conversations with us.
FitBit(ch): “You already fooled me once with the roller coaster trick! I am not counting this as exercise. You are probably just eating chips really fast.”
Me: “You still counted 250 steps. Maybe I’m having a dance-off with my friends!”
FitBit(ch): “Please. Your social life only happens inside your head. Playing The Sims is not a sport, you nerd!”
Me: “Hey, being a nerd landed me a job. Behave, or I’ll swap you for a real watch.”
Roller coasters offered interesting data as my Fitbit would easily consider a Luna Park ride ‘Great exercise’. Yet, when I was physically running, this piece of tech would barely acknowledge my efforts with ‘Fine’.
‘Wear your fitbit’ the boyfriend said. ‘What do you have to lose other than kilos?’ Errr I don’t know, dignity? Patience? Temper?
I often walked to my bus stop instead of taking the tram. I did this to please the Fitbit overlord/lady and live my city-girl fantasy before I hopped on an unfashionable bus headed to the suburbs.
Every day, I walked past a gorgeous tree with the lushest foliage, and every day I got distracted, feeling my fantasies and committing the rookie mistake of walking on the wrong side of the footpath.
That’s how you know someone is from Italy, and not from Australia:
They ask for a ‘caffe’ d’orzo’ instead of a ‘flat white’, and they are confused by 3 pm closing times when you most need coffee.
They don’t know how to order a drink at Starbucks because there were no Starbucks in Italy when they left.
They look confused at a menu with ‘chicken parmigiana’ written on it and look even more confused at the shapeless mass of unidentified ingredients on the plate.
They don’t like Vegemite or involuntarily put too much of it on toast in an attempt to look nonchalant.
On an escalator, they don’t stand neatly on the left because there aren’t any escalators in the small mountain town they are from.
And, most notably,
They walk on the wrong side of the street because cars should drive on the right, and street laws are more like guidelines anyway.
Between a ‘sorry’ and a passive-aggressive shoulder bump, I usually made my way to the bus stop, taking in the metropolitan view of the County Court, my favourite tree, and delayed timetables.
I was still not on Instagram. It was a matter of principles. But I hadn’t lost the habit of checking Facebook, despite knowing all my friends were asleep at that time. Between an ad and a meme, I found an article, or should I say an article found me. There was a website called Melbourne Urban Forest that offered a map of all the trees in Melbourne, and it allowed you to send an email to a specific one.
Let that sink in.
In Melbourne, you can write to your favourite tree!
Dear Melbourne Urban Forest -Tree ID 10116210 :
“Hello! I walk past you almost every day heading to work, and I have to admit, you are stunning this Summer! I can’t wait to see your Autumn leaves. They are usually my personal favourites, with their yellow and red hues. You are the most leafy of the block!”
From Tree ID 10116210:
“Hi Friend, thank you for noticing! Being near a busy road, I often can’t tell if people notice as they whizz by in their cars. I’ll make sure to keep up the cool-weather blush just for you! Have a tree-mendous week. Your friend, Manchurian Pear”
Highlight of my year!
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence dated back to 2015, when these events took place:
I share your level of panic at Starbucks and that is (not the fact that is a capitalistic megacorp) what keeps me away. What the fuck is a latte, and what does Tall means?
Also also, as another fitBITCH wearer, excluding Americano it’s all working against its purpose of biting into my calories.
You can write to a tree??!! No way!! I had to click the link, pretty cool!!
Loved this post Barb, so hilarious! Like Elaine commented, the perfume descriptions and fitbtich! 😂 But also, the ‘chicken parmigiana'🤣🤣🤣