Y

The American Civil War is 3 years old this week and the soldier has an broken pocket watch filled with Yves Saint Laurent with a picture of Madeline, his sweet heart back home, attached inside the lid. The watch is nestled in his breast pocket right over his heart as he marches Sherman’s March to the Sea. Georgia is hot and sweaty and filled with Mosquitos and wreckage this December. Madeline would hate it here, he thinks. She’s a Yankee through and through, preferring the harsh winters of Springfield Massachusetts to any good weather subsidy the southern climes might offer. The soldier is not so sure how he feels and, despite the intense violence he’s experienced in the past 3 years, he thinks the South has a lot to offer. Fruit trees, for example. And porch architecture. Marching in line, he thinks to himself, it’s these peripheral actualities that tell me I’m alive. The peach trees and the porches that they pass by endlessly, never needing to look directly in order to know what they are. In the periphery, the soldier passively resolves some of the bigger questions he has about life. The march is wordlessly and endlessly peripheral, punctuated by extreme acts of vengeance. The war is coming to an end, this march is about something else, about proving something. He becomes a point, no longer a part of an endless line of sameness that war puts upon people in order to execute horrible violence. He is a point and the space radiating out around him in all directions is life. He wonders if this could be true, or if he is perhaps beginning to try to dissociate his sense of self from what he and the Northern troops have been doing this past month. As his feet try to avoid the clods of mud on the marching road, he holds the broken pocket watch in his hand to soothe himself. It is 1864, he thinks, but if I’m a point and the periphery around this point is what tells me I’m alive, then perhaps here on this road is more like time than like space. It’s an odd thought and he doesn’t really know what to call it. He can feel the Yves Saint Laurent gently sloshing around inside the gear case of the watch. He tries not to look at the picture of Madeline in front of the other Northerners. He has told his best friend Big Jake that if anything should happen to him, to get the watch off his dead body and make sure Madeline gets when the war is over. Big Jake says he’d do his darnedest and the soldier believes him and takes solace in that. Big Jake is a close friend. At night when it’s cold, the soldiers sleep nestled into each other, spooning in a long line, sometimes 60 soldiers long, all spooning front to back to front to back... Every 2 hours or so they all change direction, so as to remain comfortable and give the soldiers on the end a chance to warm their cold fronts or backs. He has never been an end in the long spoon, but Big Jake, who claims to have a high metabolism, is often willing to do so and since he likes to sleep next to Big Jake, he is often second in line. They sleep fully clothed, tucked into each other in a militaristic coziness. These nights are the only form of intimacy the men get, unless they are willing to sneak of into the woods together as some of them often do. He snaps out of his daydreaming as a colonel on a horse rides by telling them to stop marching and set up camp in the field to their right. The soldier is grateful that the day is coming to an end. His feet are wet and infected and the wants to take off his boots. First he has to see to the horses, one of his jobs in setting up camp. The soldier puts his pocket watch back in his breast pocket and walks back down the road a ways to the horse cart that’s carrying some of the supplies. He and the driver lead the cart into the fields and the soldier unyokes the young mare. They’ve lost a lot of soldiers in this war and they’ve lost a lot of horses too. It’s easier to hit a horse with a musket ball than a person and so they’ve recently had to replace this cart horse with this young mare that they’re still getting to know and training on the job. Two soldiers have pounded a hitching post into the ground where the horses will remain for the night. The soldier leads the young mare over to the hitching post and ties her up. He comes back with hay and a small trough and returns yet again to fill up the trough with water. Satisfied with his work, he pats the young mare on the face and hears Big Jake yell a greeting to him from the other side of the mare. He is excited to see Big Jake after a day in his thoughts and he starts to walk around the young mare when a powder test, to test if the gun powder for some of the artillery is too wet, goes off in the field. The explosion spooks the young mare, causing her to kick the soldier in the chest, sending him flying and breaking his rib cage. Big Jake witnesses all of this and he runs up to the soldier, who is lying in the mud, his vital organs damaged and his lungs collapsed. Big Jake leans over him and the soldier, in his final moments, takes the smashed pocket watch out of his jacket. He puts the watch in Big Jake’s hands, unable to talk, wheezing. Yves Saint Laurent is leaking out of the gear casing and dripping out of Big Jake’s hand onto the thick wool jacket of the soldier. It is Y, the new masculine fragrance by Yves Saint Laurent. Inspired by the iconic Yves Saint Laurent white t-shirt and black jacket, this Eau De Toilette represents a balance between freshness and strength. Like a crisp white t-shirt, notes of bergamot, sage and ginger offer a sharp juicy freshness to challenge convention and exceed all expectations. At its base, soft notes of balsam fir, cedarwood and marine ambergris embody the subtle power of a tailored black jacket that is refined, chic and surprisingly powerful. An authentic and bold creation; masculinity redefined.

Everything starts with a Why.