Perfume Genius Explains His Credit Card Statement

Credit History is an interview series where we ask our favorite artists to comb through their credit card statements and tell us about what they bought, from the necessary to the frivolous to the outlandish.

Mike Hadreas has been working through something in therapy, and maybe—just maybe—he’s made a breakthrough. “Usually before a record, I’ll become really diligent about exercising and eating well, and I just don’t have it in me anymore,” Hadreas tells me over Zoom from his Los Angeles home, with his dog Petunia and longtime partner Alan Wyffels shuffling around in the background. “And if I don’t do it, then I assume I’m gonna fail, which is so vain. ‘No one’s going to like your music unless you’re fully snatched all the time.’ Not true but it’s built into me. My therapist was like, ‘What if you showed up exactly as you are?’ That’s kind of what I’ve been doing lately, and it seems to be going good?” 

The 43-year-old singer-songwriter who performs as Perfume Genius seems to be doing better than “good,” if our delightful chat and his explosive new album Glory are any indication. He’s orange-y blonde now and a little tan, looking more like an actor than a frontman. In the fantastical-yet-rustic videos for recent singles “No Front Teeth” and “It’s a Mirror,” he wears an effortless blend of designer and Amazon duds while getting mixed up in supernatural happenings in a weird old house in Kansas City. For once he wanted the clips to move like a film, to all connect and ambiguously complement the album, which he likens to “a journal cracked open.” Hadreas adds, “The risk of it is that it could have been really bad.” 

Thankfully, the videos feel wonderfully Lynchian, down to the part where Hadreas considers the house where they shot—and the family living there, who guest in the clips—to be a crucial part of the atmosphere around the record. I can’t help but think of the real woman who lives in Laura Palmer’s house in the Twin Peaks universe, and how she showed up in The Return. It makes a lot of sense when, a few minutes later, Hadreas brings up buying the whole Twin Peaks series on iTunes while we discuss some of his credit card charges of late. 

Read on for more of Perfume Genius’s recent purchases, from his weekly Thai massage to a TikTok-coded steam cleaner.

Thai massage ($90 for 90 minutes, plus tip)

Mike Hadreas: I try to go to this Thai spa in L.A. once a week if I can. It really recalibrates me. It does more than my muscles—it de-puffs my brain. My spiritual inflammation is seriously de-puffed. They really use a ton of pressure. Most massages I’ve ever had just feel like people rubbing their skin on my skin, and I understand that’s supposed to be relaxing, but I want deep tissue. In Thai massage they walk on you, and it’s the only time that I’ve had enough pressure. 

Sometimes the woman that I see, Jai, makes me cry a little bit, because I’m being touched deeply in a place that’s never been touched. But then it’s also excruciating sometimes, and I go into a weird zone where I start seeing volcanos and nature videos because it’s so visceral. It’s very much like a sports massage, but I still can fall asleep in it. It feels really intense, and that’s weirdly calming; it’s relieving to have the outside match the inside.

I’ve been going there for years. I did switch from one [massage therapist] to another, and I was feeling anxious about going back, because I felt like she was mad at me. But I’m trying to have boundaries and not be codependent on people—especially when they really don’t care. 

Strawberry Watermelon Geek Bar ($20)

I quit smoking seven years ago, then I started vaping, then I started a combination of the patch and a mint, then it was just the mint. And then I quit all nicotine for a year. But I started going back to the recovery community, and they all vape. They’re really spiritually fit, and they’re ripping the vape. So I felt like, I can be good and still vape. I started fully doing it again—but secretly, which didn’t feel like part of the recovery community way of doing things. I switched to Zyn for a little bit, but that’s very gross. It’s just like a lot of little trash things that you have to dispose of constantly. 

Geek Bars have a lot of flavor, which probably means a lot of long-term effects, but they also don’t hurt my throat. I think they’re trying to phase them out and just have non-flavored vapes, which I get, ethically. But emotionally, I need the gummy worm—I need it. This one is strawberry-watermelon, and the design has a whole galaxy on it. I feel like I’m smoking a Game Boy. Especially because, in the beginning, vapes were like a car battery, and you had to squirt poop [aka vape juice] into it. I remember one time I was smoking my car battery while it was plugged in, but my cord was only a few inches long, so I was on the floor next to the outlet, sucking it in. It felt so demoralizing. But this, this is for babies. 

Vintage cowboy boots ($80)

I got some cowboy boots from this vintage store in Paris that weirdly look like Oklou’s wardrobe. Like they just went to Oklou’s house and they were reselling her clothes. They’re, like, jaunty. Do you want to see? [shows me the boots] They’re just regular but they’re not new. All the new ones are too new-looking. I like knowing that somebody else was before me, and now I’m just stepping into their shoes. 

I like that you had to go to Paris to get something very American.

Well, that’s what’s strange about some vintage places [abroad]—it is very American. It’s like Patagonia and Columbia everywhere, all around the world.

Steam cleaner ($150)

I just took it out of the box before our call. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s very TikTok-coded. It’s very Instagram-looking, very minimal and sleek. Sometimes that means it won’t work, but I hope it does. My friend got it and they said it was amazing. I’m definitely going to use it for the shower, maybe the floors. It deodorizes, and it gets rid of viruses and shit, which I’m sure are littered in our house. It’s also for [my dog] Petunia, because she has allergies, and I’ve been trying to dust more. [picks dog up] Isn’t she so cute? 

Bully sticks for Petunia ($15 per pack)

Petunia is 1 and she’s wild, so we get these bully sticks. For her, they’re actually like cow dicks, because they stretch them into these long pizzles—beef pizzles. It’s like her screen time: You give her one of those and she is occupied for two hours. If she ever gets really crazy when we have people over, it’s like giving her an iPad. She’s captivated by the pizzle.

Buffy and Twin Peaks downloads on iTunes ($87.98)

Last night right before I went to bed, I bought the Buffy complete series on iTunes, just because I want to make sure that I have it when any streaming service goes down or stops carrying it. I also bought the Twin Peaks box set, because, on streaming, it’s too HD and the aspect ratio is widescreen and it looks weird to me. I’m sure the iTunes version is clearer and cleaner than when I saw Twin Peaks on TV when I was little, but it has the same quality to it, and the aspect ratio is like the TV. I haven’t checked to see if the Buffy one is too HD, but I don’t want to see Sarah Michelle Gellar’s pores or anything. 

Twin Peaks doesn’t look enough like shit [on streaming], honestly. That enhanced the soap opera effect of it—which Twin Peaks just naturally has—but it didn’t feel intentional. It felt like not David Lynch-approved. Or at least the David Lynch in my head was not approving it. 

A casino in Second Life ($40)

This is a vulnerable share, but I have been gambling on Second Life. So I will buy 40 U.S. dollars worth of the in-game currency, then go to the casino and play the slot machines. It’s not a problem anymore, but it has been: During COVID I was talking about it in therapy because I was in such a dark place with it. Which is crazy because I already spent so much money in the game for my outfit. You have to buy everything in Second Life. You have to buy your hair, you have to buy your body. If you want more realistic nipples, you have to buy those. 

I bought all this stuff for my character, and then I had nowhere to go. I wasn’t talking to anybody, and I had no interest in it. But then I went to the casino, and I was like, Oooh, this is it, this is why I’ve gotten all dressed up. It’s just mindless, which I think is why it feels dark-sided, because I’m not really enjoying it. It’s like doomscrolling; some mechanism is getting activated. I think about how bonkers it is that I’m a blue lady, and I had to pay so that it could float around and not walk. My blue lady just floats like a ghost to the function.