Farewell, Caution, Part 2
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| Tama in front of Diptyque by Corey Nguyen |
When everyone arrived, Tama led our small group downstairs into Barney’s perfume department, where the sales assistants were waiting for us with gift bags and bottles of water for everyone. For a newbie like me it was all rather overwhelming because the perfume department there is enormous and has so many complete lines as well as an entire room dedicated to Frederic Malle and a Le Labo counter where perfumes were made to order that it was impossible to take it all in while simultaneously opining on how various perfumes smelled on different people. So after sniffing there with the group, and then moving on to Neiman Marcus, Hermes, and Diptyque and a lunch where I chatted with several new people, I was completely worn out. But Tama seemed indefatigable; she had a passion and enthusiasm that was hard to match and I heard later that she had indeed led several in the group through the full day as she had planned.
Liz (aka SmokeyToes), who Tama had met through Now Smell This, was actually the person I connected to that day. It turned out that she worked in the library at San Francisco State University, where I was going to graduate school, and we would soon be meeting up in her office at the library to sniff and swap perfume decants. I would have met Brooke (aka Brookster), another friend that Tama had made through Now Smell This, that first day, too, but she didn’t show up until after I had already left.
After that, Tama took charge of keeping all us Bay Area perfumistas organized and up to date. I soon learned that her group included both people she had she had connected with through the Now Smell This perfume blog, which tended to attract mostly women and people she had connected with through the Basenotes web site, which tended to attract mostly men. She coordinated our biannual “Sniffs” in San Francisco’s Union Square and gathered us all together for special presentations at various shops by visiting sales representatives from niche perfume lines and even by perfumers or brand owners who were on tour introducing their latest creations. (Who can forget the presentation at Saks that the handsome Kilian Hennessey’s did of his entire By Kilian line. With his artfully mussed hair, unbuttoned white shirt, and heavy accent, he fairly oozed French charm.) It was easy to belong to this group because all you had to do was show up; you could count on everyone to be welcoming, friendly, tolerant, and accepting.
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| Corey Sniffing Tama's Perfume |
But I also learned that her appreciation of beauty was a big part of her daily life. As she walked through the city, she was always stopping to take photographs of roses and beautiful views that caught her eye. She also created fabric art and custom quilts in her sewing workshop. And for years she had studied hula dancing. So when she fell in love with perfume, she plunged in full force and committed herself fully to this new passion of hers. And she loved drawing others into this new world of beauty she discovered. She later wrote:
“I wonder what Dad would think of my immersion in the world of perfume. Would he cluck at how much money I’m spending? Probably, but he would smell everything I offered up for him to evaluate. He would be pleased that I am able to write these stories and reviews, and have them read by so many enthusiasts. I think he would enjoy the idea of making scent friends and gathering together for sniff-fests and events. If he was still with us, I would invite him to the perfume counter with me, so we could share in our mutual pleasure of perfume.”
Tama’s presence online was as large as it was in real life. She was always posting photos of us at events and reports on our sniffing expeditions and shared a lot of her thoughts about perfumes that she had bought, was thinking of buying, or had recently tested. Her voice was unique—fun, colorful, and passionate. In fact, Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief of the CaFleurBon perfume blog, was so impressed with the comments that Tama contributed to her blog that Michelyn invited Tama to start writing perfume reviews. This ultimately led to Tama becoming a full-fledged perfume critic. As a critic, her passion for perfume shined through in everything she wrote. Here’s a quote from one of her first posts Fragrant Awakenings: Tauer Perfumes L’Air du Desert Marocain – Down the Rabbit Hole I Go , which was about L’Air du Desert Marocain by independent Swiss perfumer Andy Tauer:
“To say I was instantly transported to another place is nearly understatement. I was in that hot tent, surrounded by fragrant smoke from incense and hookahs, I was in the dusty bazaar listening to vendors hawk their wares in a foreign tongue, I was standing in the middle of a desert, the sun baking the sand and my body. I had never experienced such a profound sense of place from a perfume. Some had made me gasp and swoon at their beauty, or be taken aback by their oddness, but had never just spirited me away.”
Eventually I met Brooke at a San Francisco event that Tama organized. She was a short curvy blonde with a radiant smile, wearing a orange dress and kitten heels, who was around 20 years younger than me. What struck me most at the time was that she had brought a box of beautifully prepared decants, each in little mesh bags, that she had put together as little gifts for the rest of us. That generosity and that thoughtfulness I would later learn were two of her most defining characteristics.
The year 2014 was when everything changed. It began with Tama losing her job as a building manager. After that she struggled to make ends meet by taking a series of temporary jobs. She lived as frugally as possible while looking for a permanent job, but as the months passed, she began to panic about being able to keep paying her rent:
The year 2014 was when everything changed. It began with Tama losing her job as a building manager. After that she struggled to make ends meet by taking a series of temporary jobs. She lived as frugally as possible while looking for a permanent job, but as the months passed, she began to panic about being able to keep paying her rent:
“Facing homelessness is weird. I have moments of real hope, then nonchalance, then serious gut-wrenching terror. I've been dreaming about somehow buying a tiny trailer to live in in the wilderness. Will I have to move away? I mean away away? I have a short time to cough up a lot of money. I'll be selling things, for sure, probably have a garage sale at some point.
So many people have it worse off than me, I know, and I understand my flaws, but there are so many things I want to do that I need my space for, I have so much to express. I don't want to die in the street.”
At the same time, she began complaining about being tired and said she was losing weight, even though she wasn’t dieting, though she postponed getting a check up because she was worried about the cost. By the end of the summer her energy was so low that even just making up a flight of stairs became a challenge. And her appetite was almost completely gone. She said that she would buy a burrito bowl from Chipotle and it would last her for three or four meals.
In mid-September of 2014, with no warning, Tama disappeared from social media. Since she had been posting regularly about her health problems and her inability to see a doctor, as the days passed people began to ask, “Is Tama okay? Has anyone heard from her lately?” And when no one who had seen her or talked to her or messaged with her came forward, people began to say things like, “She’s not well and she’s living by herself, what if she has collapsed on the floor and can’t call for help and is lying there all alone? So even though I didn’t know her that well, because I lived in the Bay Area, I said I would check.
I decided to contact Brooke because she was someone I knew who actually saw Tama in person quite frequently. Brooke said she was worried, too because not only was Tama not replying on social media but her voice mail was full. So, because Tama’s birthday was coming up, Brooke decided to drive out to Tama’s apartment in Pacifica and bring her a birthday cake. When she knocked on Tama’s door, a slight, elderly white-haired woman answered it, explaining that she was Laura, Tama’s mother. Brooke says that she could tell right away that something was wrong because Laura and her partner, Lisa, were cleaning out the refrigerator. And Laura explained that Tama had become extremely confused and incomprehensible, so they had taken her to the hospital, which was where she was now. Although the doctors thought her symptoms were due to elevated calcium levels, they were still trying to determine the root cause, though they suspected it was cancer.
After her doctors brought her calcium levels down, Tama returned to normal—mentally at least—and she was released from the hospital. But the diagnosis was definitely cancer, with the exact type and recommended treatment still to be determined. Because Tama was flat broke by then, getting some money to live on became her first priority. And she decided that selling off her perfume would be the easiest way to start. (If this seems like a silly idea, trying doing this math word problem: If you sell 100 bottles of perfume at an average price of $100, then your total profit would return would be ).
The thought of Tama facing cancer while she had no money and was living by herself—her mother, Laura, was quite elderly and frail, and unable to take her daughter in—was just intolerable to me. So when Brooke let me know she was going to sell Tama’s perfume for her, I told Brooke that I wanted to help, too, because I knew this project would entail a myriad of mundane tasks, from billing to packing to standing in line at the post office. So that weekend, Brooke picked me up and we drove out to Pacifica, the small coastal down just south of San Francisco, where Tama had been living in a very modest apartment in an attempt to save money.
You can find Part 3 of this story here.
by Nina Zolotow
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