The journalist, screenwriter and author Benjamin Law is known for his books The Family Law and Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East, as well as his funny, insightful columns for Fairfax Media and the Monthly. He’s arguably less well-known for his passion for the smell of Dettol and Vaseline, Roald Dahl and the inner workings of the gut.
What’s thrilling?
I was camping with my brother’s new girlfriend – she’s Korean – and my family, and because you need sunscreen when you go out camping , she had a really amazing sunscreen that I’m going to buy. It’s Bioré [UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence sunscreen, not now available in Australia]. When you put sunscreen on, it can be quite gluggy, especially with SPF 50+, but this felt like my face was a baby’s butt, it was so soft.
I also have a new fragrance by Comme des Garçons, it’s called Standard [$139, Mecca Cosmetica]. I’m really fussy with fragrance; I’m really sensitive to smell. This smells exactly how I want to smell, it’s so woody and peppery, it kind of smells like a lumberjack’s balls. I’m dousing myself in that at the moment. Fragrance is very trial and error. What do I want to smell like? I feel like I’ve just nailed it; it’s taken a very long time.
Right now I’m reading Giulia Enders’ Gut [$29.99, Scribe]. It’s about our digestive system and poop, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. The whole science of the gut is a relatively new frontier. People are starting to realise how it affects other health including mental health, and she’s hilarious in how she writes about it.
What I keep going back to
QV makes a deodorant that you can only get in chemists and I use it because it’s not an antiperspirant. I find that stuff seals your armpits shut, it’s really creepy. I’m lucky because I don’t really sweat that much but I need something to address smell. It doesn’t stain my clothes and I like the fact it’s fragrance-free. Nothing makes me want to spew more than the smell of an aerosol deodorant like Lynx Africa – which is admittedly what I used in high school. It’s the smell of PE, the smell of locker rooms and troughs. I want something that doesn’t smell at alland I also want a deodorant that doesn’t mess around with the fragrance [I’m] wearing.
I keep going back to any book by David Sedaris. Little Brown is about to release his diaries from the 1980s onwards [Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)]. Part of me thought, “It’s not as if he was a published writer then, is his writing going to be that interesting? How much of an interesting figure is he when he’s not conscious of writing for an audience?”
But there are some passages in the diaries that remind me that his perspective on life and family, being gay and being an artist were there from the start. That savage, biting commentary, as well as deep reserves of compassion, are all there. I can pick up any collection of David Sedaris’s essays and be very happy. He keeps surprising me with how much, after all these years, he still really makes me laugh.
What’s nostalgia-inducing?
This sounds gross, but the smell of Dettol and Vaseline is totally childhood. My mum was really into moisturising before it was a thing that dudes should moisturise as much as women, because it was seen as gay when we were growing up. Now I think every dude moisturises. Because my mum is Chinese-Malaysian, skincare was really important; we always had that really big bulk pack of Vaseline moisturiser. I don’t use it any more but when I smell it, I’m taken right back to childhood.
I don’t think you would think of Dettol as a beauty product but one of the suggestions on the back of Dettol is having a bath in it. We would totally have Dettol baths and even now when I smell Dettol I am so relaxed.
Anything by Roald Dahl takes me back. My first memory of being gifted anything from my family was the Christmas when my mum bought a stack of Roald Dahl books and I was so, so happy. I put my name in them, my grade as well, just in case anyone took them away from me. I would cover them with clear ConTact as well, because books are expensive. The childhood version of myself would see how I treat books now and be completely mortified that I’m not casing them with clear ConTact. I’m pretty sentimental about those books: The Witches, The BFG and Matilda are the three I think everyone goes back to – and my favourites as well.
A book that makes me sentimental now is Patti Smith’s Just Kids (Bloomsbury Publishing). I’m not sure if it’s sentimental but maybe wistfulness is the best word for it. You know how great Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe are about to become [but] the version of herself that she is writing about doesn’t know it yet – and it’s a glorious thing.
