Late 90s cigarette scent memory

My relationship with incense started, as I imagine it did for many late 90s teenage delinquents, in an attempt to cover up the smell of cigarettes. I choked down my first puffs before I ever hit puberty, but I didn’t become a regular smoker until high school. By that time, I was smoking more than Marlboro Lights. Cigarettes were a daily habit and weed had become a regular weekend occurrence, which meant my mall rat patchouli sticks were working overtime. 

Around 16, my friends and I started getting serious about what we smoked. With fake IDs and older siblings in our pockets, we weren’t dependent on “hey misters” and shoplifting. We experimented with menthols and bidis, and European imports. I started smoking Dunhill blues because that’s what Courtney Love smoked, but there was something about Djarum Blacks that captured my heart. I never smoked them regularly, but cloves were a singular, multisensory experience.

The crackle of burning black paper, the sweet aftertaste of spiced sugar, the numbing sensation of burning cloves, and the smell–sweet, spicy, sticky. It clung to whatever it touched, making goth girls and Toyota Corolla's scent memory super spreaders. But cloves weren’t just another late 90s misfit indicator, they’re one of Indonesia’s biggest money makers. 

As much as they might remind me of my American youth, “cloves” have a history over one hundred years deep, with roots dating back even further. In Indonesia, where they originated in the late 1880s as a cure for asthma and sore throats, they’re known as kretek, a word derived from the signature sound of crackling clove. 

They’re made from a combination of clove buds, tobacco, and a secret “sauce” containing flavors like chocolate, licorice, strawberry, banana, and rum. It’s sadly a seductive combination forever tied to slavery, war, and death. Colonialists committed unthinkable acts to profit from tobacco and spices, but it was Indonesian ingenuity that brought the two together. 

Kretek cigarettes were technically outlawed in the US in 2009 under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, but they’ve since been reformulated and repackaged to fit a cigar-shaped loophole in the restrictions. In any case, smoking isn’t what it used to be. The older I get the harder it is to ignore the harsh reality that smoking kills. I still crave cigarettes all the time, but I just can’t smoke with the same enthusiasm. 

That’s why my latest scent experiment is an attempt at mimicking not masking. Instead of covering up the scent of stale butts with incense or air fresheners, I want to resurrect the memory of a freshly smoked clove still smoldering in the ashtray of my best friend’s first car.

SHAMELESS CONCEPTION

NOTES ON “CHURCH SCENTs,” INCENSE & THE BIBLE’S SOFT UNDERBELLY

DETAIL FROM LUCA GIORDANO’S THE FALL OF THE REBEL ANGELS, C. 1665 KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM. VIENNA, AUSTRIA

I grew up listening to my dad tell the same stories over and over again.

The best ones were about the bad guys. Backstabbing, betrayal, crucifixion, apocalypse; The Bible had it all. Every Sunday, I’d sit on a red velvet cushion, awash in the filtered light of stained glass, and imagine the good book’s unholiest passages come to life.

Sadly, the churches of my childhood were a far cry from the Sistine Chapel. In fact, Methodists in the American Southwest have a thing for mid-century minimalism that barely even grazes the surface of Christianity’s flair for the dramatic. There may be towering organ pipes, red velvet cushions, and stained glass windows, but what about the frankincense, myrrh, and gold? Whatever happened to the crucifix? And who took the wine out of communion? 

Modest surroundings aside, I somehow managed to turn every Sunday service into a gothic fairy tale in my mind, at least for a time. You know, nothing lasts forever.

As puberty set in I became painfully aware that, at least according to the church, I wasn’t quite right. I spent days praying to God to fix me and nights shamefully masturbating to scrambled bodies on restricted cable. I wanted men more than I wanted redemption, and that shame was too much to carry.

So, when I left home some years later, I walked away from the church and its stories and started exploring unholy passages of my own. I drank, I smoked, I fucked, and I feasted. I transformed impure thoughts into glorious realities. I figured, “If God is watching, I’ll give him a show.” But even that didn’t last forever.

When I started making incense in 2020, The Bible was the furthest thing from my mind, but still I found myself gravitating toward so-called church scents. There was no frankincense, benzoin, or myrrh in my scent memory, and yet when I burned them for the first time they were instantly nostalgic. I could feel the red velvet cushion beneath me, the prismatic beams of light warming my face. I could see my dad in his long white robe and cowboy boots, ripping a loaf of bread in half and raising a chalice of grape juice to the sky, signs of the cannibalistic blood ritual to follow.

Up until then, these sacred resins were as real to me as the devil himself, but as the sweet smoke made contact with my scent receptors, I was reminded of what I loved about church in the first place. The Bible was rich and full of spectacle, overflowing with gruesome scandals, iconic villains, and vulgar beauty. With ancient volatiles in the air, my father’s stories took on new dimension. There was a scent to the memories. 

I studied the ingredients, noting their unique characteristics, first alone and then in combination. I tweaked, and tuned, and subconsciously formed the foundation of my first incense collection for Son of a Preacher. Instead of playing to their purity, I sought tension, subverting heavenly scents with seductive florals, rich ambers, and ripe fruit. I embraced my demons and watched the shame float away.

Son of a Preacher is a reminder that there is no light without darkness; that sometimes bad deeds come before happy endings. It is an invitation to live shamelessly. I hope you will. 

xoxo, SOAP