Melissa Broder's sluttiest samples 🍓☁️

An interview with the novelist and e-queen

A note before we begin—this Thursday at 9pm PST/12 AM EST, we’ll be doing a chat to discuss the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of A Showgirl. Subscribers will get an alert once the chat is live, and you can join on desktop or the Substack app. And now onto the main show!

In case you’re living under a rock, Melissa Broder is a brilliant novelist, poet, and undisputed queen of the website formerly known as Twitter. No one else can make existential angst feel quite so funny in 140 characters. Her books slay the disturbed girlie corner of Goodreads, i.e. the only genre we fuck with. Her novels have given us hot mermen (The Pisces), mommy issues (Milk Fed), and a magic cactus (Death Valley). Her essays and poetry offer horny mysticism (So Sad Today) and luminous dread (Superdoom). And crucially for our purposes: Melissa is a fraghead! Anyone who’s met her knows she always smells fantastic, typically radiating lovely vanilla or tuberose. Below, we “pick her brain” on her latest scent obsessions and more.

First things first: how many spritzes and where?

Three: one on each wrist, and one on the neck.

What’s the first fragrance you bought?

Coty Exclamation, baby. Then came Malibu Musk; then Vanilla oil from The Body Shop.

We hear you’re a sample slut like us—what samples are you loving right now?

I just went HAM on a gourmand and fruity sample bender for my birthday (Virgo). Narcotica’s Narco Oasis (I bought a 10 ML because I love it, but I still think it counts). Jousset’s Sticky Popcorn. Brandt’s Guava Sorbet. d’Annam’s Strawberry Mochi (love and hate). Kyse Perfumes Delizia di Marshmallow. Universal Flowering’s Poems One Through Twelve (not a sample, but a gift from a certain Ms. Anna Dorn and new for me–so I’m going to count it; addicted). Hilde Soliani’s Crema di Latte (also a Dorn). Giardini Di Toscana Bianco Latte. Theodoris Kalotinis Bubblegum Factory. Maison Mataha’s Evasion Bonbon (cough medicine, can’t stop).

What is the horniest perfume you’ve ever smelled?

Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower is one of my signature scents. When I got my first sample, I’d huff it and masturbate. There’s a mommy-daughter seduction porn starring a busty MILF named Persia Monir, and I appropriated the porn into my own fantasies whilst sniffing.

What perfume or scent are you the most nostalgic about?

Issey Miyake’s L’Eau d’Issey (paired with Marlboro Lights). I got a driver’s license, freedom, and a body under its wing.

Can you pair a perfume with each of your novels?

The Pisces - Profumum Roma Aqua Di Sale. Or Apothia IF.

Milk Fed - Montale’s Bubble Forever. Or maybe Chocolate Greedy.

Death Valley - Tauer L’Air Du Desert Marocain (smells like motor oil to me, but there it is).

Can you pair a scent with your adorable chihuahua, Pickle?

I gotta go photorealistic for this one. Pickle simply smells like a roast chicken.

You’ve been tweeting about perfume lately.

They haven’t been bangers in terms of putting “numbers on the boards” but let me share some them:

i want a perfume that smells like the first light i saw in the dark wood i found myself in when the straight path was lost in the middle of my life

i want a perfume that smells like the breath of a black haired green eyed boy as he explains to me the difference between art and design just before i tell him to shut up and push him gently backward against a graffitied wall under the constellation of orion

i want a perfume that smells like silence

Are there any notes you simply don’t fuck with?

Amber, because my mother.

What do you think your girl Emily Dickinson smelled like?

Dust. And probably scones (she was a big baker).

If you had to wear one fragrance for life, what would it be?

Ex Nihilo’s Fleur Narcotique.