Makes Scents...

This morning I almost dropped a bottle of cologne onto the cold, hard tile floor. This would have been a disaster, albeit the best smelling disaster this side of a bakery explosion. The way I managed to avoid this sensory overload was via one of those ridiculous reflex actions wherein you flail your foot out to "catch" the falling item. This generally never works, and in fact, more often leads to an even worse spill, but this morning, someone was smiling and it actually worked. My foot absorbed the impact, and the bottle rolled serenely across the bathroom floor. Which is good, because I really don’t own that much cologne.

I’m not the type of guy to have a whole shelf-load of cologne. First of all, I am a traveller through both time and space (so to speak), so I don’t have all the room in the world to pack toiletries. And secondly (have you ever noticed how many people say "First of all" but there’s never a second or third on the list?) I am a simple guy. I don’t want to have to stand over my vast array of aromas and think, "How do I feel today? Sporty? Suave? Rugged? as if I were naming token members of a boy-band. I prefer to just go with what works, a little scent I like to call, "Dead-Sexxy."

Since all scents smell differently on different people (which I think is pretty cool), I like to test them out. Generally, what happens is that I wait for a girl to give me some cologne as a present. Since cologne is expensive, this will most likely be the current girlfriend, or a really close friend. This doesn’t mean I’m too cheap to buy it myself; I’m talking about the initiation of a new scent. If it works, I’ll go ahead and buy some more. Just wanted to clear that up. The important thing is that I trust a woman’s opinion on whether I smell good, better than any guy’s, including my own.

Another important issue is whether it works with all your other scents. You need to have the total olfactory package: the cologne has got to work in harmony with the soap and deodorant, shaving cream and after-shave, not to mention natural body musk (why does the word "musk" seem so dirty? Maybe it’s because of Muskrats.)

Then I just start collecting input. Every "Oh, you smell really good" is logged and recorded. If there is an upgrade to "You smell amazing" then that’s an automatic five points. My usual response, by the way, is "You’re Damn right I do." Or sometimes, "Yes, indeed I do smell amazing, however, you should stop that, as it doesn’t taste as good as it smells." Oh wait, that didn’t happen so much in reality as it did in my head as I was writing this. So once a cologne gets a high enough approval rating, then it may just receive a prestigious position on my bathroom shelf.

The current inventory includes only two flavours, which is good, because I only happen to have two moods. One is the ever-classic, never-fail Aqua de Gio. Sometimes I swear that stuff is the best purchase a guy could ever make. The other is the less well-known Altitude, by Swiss Army. Which on the whole, always gets me thinking about what a strange Army the Swiss have got themselves. They’ve got no equipment to speak of, defending a "supposedly" neutral country for so long, but when it comes to nifty pocket knives, precision watches and fantastic cologne they’ve got it made. They must be the best smelling, most punctual troops that have 75 small blades for any occasion. Great to have on a camping trip, those guys.

Ok, that was ridiculous. Time to stop.