You Can't Blame a Compass for Pointing North

I got into the elevator today with a guy who went a little heavy on the Axe Body Wash, and just like Proust’s madeleine; dude’s stench took me back ten days into the past; to Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. I was waiting for my flight back to Jacksonville when a young guy drenched in some type of new millennium musk sat down next to me and started eating a Big Mac. I love Big Macs. They’re fat gram for fat gram my favorite fast food burger, but the smell of the Big Mac mixed with the smell of Arctic Blast, or whatever the hell it was taking years off my life, almost made me return my venti-raspberry-café Americano to sender. Big Macs don’t smell like anything else. It’s a combination of Clearasil, cheap beef, and broken dreams, but I like it. It shouldn’t be mixed with any non-trans fat based smells (i.e. French fries and supplementary burgers), especially synthetic perfumes marketed to under twenty-five males. I don’t judge these knuckleheads. I not only used to be one; I loved being one. I can’t rule out the possibility that the mellifluous tones of Drakkar Noir are what landed me my wife. I know the effects that a chick wearing perfume had on me from about 1984 thru 1991. MJ usually wore Anais Anais. When I see it in department stores I always stop. It takes me back. I remember the days of getting out of a tangerine 1972 Super Beetle with my three best buddies. I rocked the Drakkar Noir. I had a buddy who rocked the Obsession, one that rocked the Polo, and one that rocked Eternity. And we didn’t spray, delay, and walk away. We had a more Flashdance approach to cologne application. If nasal fatigue was able to set in then we weren’t wearing enough. Thank God no one ever threw a match at us.