Friday the 13th, World Radio Day, and my Long Lost Love Scent

If superstition had a scent, mine would be sea spray and sun-warmed skin. It is Friday the 13th, it is World Radio Day, and I am wearing Comptoir Sud Pacifique Aqua Motu. One spritz and I hear the soft hiss of FM static, I see a faded motel towel in the back of a sand-dusted car, I taste salt on my lips. This is not a safe aquatic. It is the skin after the swim, salted, grainy, a little wild. Calone turned down, iodine turned up, vanilla tucked into the hem.

Today’s theme is Long Lost Love, which I read as permission to time travel. Not every long lost love has to be discontinued. Some are still sold, just altered by time and by you. My bottle of Comptoir Sud Pacifique Aqua Motu is the station I can still find when I scroll the dial blindfolded. It is a memory keeper, not a ghost.

Of course, the real ghosts have their own frequency. The ones I reach for when I want a shiver, not just a smile:

• Gucci Envy, that chromium green snap of lily of the valley and cool woods, the corporate glass tower that secretly sneaks out for a cigarette.
• Fendi Theorema, orange peel and cocoa dust, a winter room lit by late honey light, the hug that lingers after everyone leaves.
• Donna Karan Chaos, resin and saffron, a low-lit corridor where every step feels fated.
• Yves Saint Laurent M7 in its original cut, dark cherry woods and medicinal heat, the oud that taught the mainstream to misbehave.

If radio built our taste with dedications and dead air, perfume did it with sillage and silence. On a day like this, I think about the scents that tuned me, the ones that taught me how to listen. The pop of a plastic cap, the tiny click of a metal sprayer, that first cold mist turning warm. Some bottles are gone for good, some come back with a new voice, some hide in auction limbo. But the body remembers the track list.

So I loop back to Comptoir Sud Pacifique Aqua Motu. Salt, sand, a whisper of vanilla, a breeze that could be yesterday. Luck feels overrated today. Memory smells better.