“RJ is a newspaper columnist whose humor column, "Pogi from a Parallel Universe" comes out every Wednesday in the For Men section of the Philippine Star, the Editor-in-Chief of UNO Magazine, a seasoned television, events and weddings/debut host and actor."
You smell good enough to mate.
Aside from the occasional butter knives that were surgically removed from the orifices of the male participants, a recent speed dating event I attended in Manila proceeded without need of police supervision. However, I was quite wary of the claims made by the organizers regarding the elusive “spark” that could be generated among the participants without the benefit of alcohol, heavy medication or a mother’s kakulitan. The men appeared to be as clueless as government officials as to whether or not they would be on their way to a second date.
During the speed dating event, I noticed how these men struggled to create a good first impression despite opening their mouths. Aside from unbuttoning their collared shirts to reveal their well-groomed chest hairs, some of the men were wearing enough cologne to knock out domestic animals and small children. Somehow, I doubt that the ability of a man’s cologne to suffocate their dates made them more attractive. However, what might make these consider these men as potential sperm donors is if these women could associate the man’s cologne to a past experience, a past experience that was memorable, a past experience that was memorable, and a past experience that did not require fumigation.
According to Indiana University psychology professor James Craig, “It is pretty clear that much of peoples’ responses to perfume and other smells is learned.” Smell is, in fact, a very powerful memory trigger, and past associations with certain colognes often dictate how a person will respond to a given scent. For example, if a woman suddenly drop kicks you in a bar, grinds the spike of her heel into your manhood and calls you a “lousy cheating bastard!” then you are probably triggering bad memories. However, if the shapeliest woman in the bar pounces on you, starts shredding your clothes and plants kisses all over your chest, then you know you’re going to get lucky tonight. Until you discover her Adam’s apple.
Apparently, this “spark” which these speed dating enthusiasts are referring to is not voluntary electrotherapy. However, even without the benefit of this elusive “spark”, there is still hope for men who want to short circuit the whole dating process and get a free pass to the fulfillment bump and grind. And that secret to short circuiting the date and mate process lies with people who smell as good as their cheese: the French.
Despite their much-maligned hygiene habits, Frenchmen are reputed to be the best lovers in the world. While we pride ourselves on the fact that our singits smell sampaguita clean, the French are even prouder that they have yet to surrender their natural aroma to nuclear-powered kalamansi fresh deco-colognes! And despite smelling like Gruyere cheese, their natural aroma has been known to disintegrate the undergarments of women for centuries.
And this could be the same reason why your only date during Saturday night is your right hand: Because you are just too damn clean! In fact, washing yourself too frequently in all the inappropriate places scrubs off your pheromones, leaving a woman unable to smell if you are the right one to help her overburden the Philippine population.
Pheromones are small organic molecules which act as form of chemical communication between two animals of the same species that can signal an individual’s identity, arousal, or sexual receptivity. The pheromones we emit come from our singits, kili-kilis, mucous membranes, nipples and, uhm, genital secretions which produce aromatic messages that travel through the air and affect the sexual behavior of the opposite sex. For example, when I don’t shower for a couple of days, my yaya wants to shower me in Lysol.
In a warped experiment to demonstrate the potency of pheromones, researchers who were picked on as children anesthetized a male golden hamster and placed it in a cage. Then they let a normal male hamster into the cage. The normal hamster bitch-slapped the anesthetized hamster, bit his ears and body hair-pulled him around the cage. And because these researchers were not having enough fun yet, they performed the experiment again, but this time around they rubbed vaginal secretions from a female hamster onto the anesthetized hamster.
When the normal hamster was placed back into the cage with the anesthesized hamster, who reeked of Parfum ala Vajayjay, the normal hamster’s reaction was quite different: he did not try to kick the butt of our dazed and confused hamster. Instead, he tried to hump it. And it was only when the scent of the vaginal secretions wore off from the anesthetized hamster that the normal male hamster realized what he had done. After five minutes of screaming, the normal hamster curled up into a ball and cried while the song “Crying Game” played in the background. If anybody knows where we can find these researchers, please let me know. We will have them jailed in Muntinlupa with convicts who are not permitted conjugal visits.
But more disturbing than being slathered with vaginal secretions is the revelation that what makes us really attractive to the opposite sex is our immune systems (and not the size of your bald spot, as my dad had mistakenly led me to believe). According to an article in Psychology Today, how our body odors (also known in Austin Powers parlance as ‘mojo’) are eventually perceived by females as pleasant and sexy is a process more selective than a government bidding. We usually smell the most attractive to a person whose genetically based immunity to disease differs most from our own.
In a mojo-generating experiment, men were asked to wear a shirt two nights in a row and not to wear deodorants or scented soaps (this experiment is better known among men as a “lifestyle”). Women were then presented with six shirts – three from men with similar genetically based immunities, and three from men with genetically based immunities different from their own. First, the women were made to take a whiff of their shirts. Next, the women were revived with smelling salts. After they had regained their wits, the women preferred the scents of men whose immunities were different from their own. The scent of men with similar immunities to their own reminded the women of a relative’s odor, such as a brother or a father, while the smells of immunities dissimilar men would often remind them of a past or current boyfriend. This suggests your kili-kili has powers that even you did not know that it possessed.
So if our mojo is the best way for us to attract a potential mate, then why do men wear cologne to mask their essence of singit? That is because cologne is the Trojan Horse that makes the female snort up our pheromones. Sniffing your man musk into the most remote regions of the nasal cavity is important to let your targeted female discover if she is the right partner to bear your six children. Given this, a pleasant smelling cologne is used to encourage unwitting members of the opposite sex to inhale more deeply the air surrounding its wearer, increasing the probability that the pheromones from the individual will also be inhaled. So, my three female readers, beware of the men who are wearing enough cologne to tranquilize elephants.
Indiana University Chemistry Professor Milos Novotny postulated that certain substances in perfumes could also act like pheromones in humans and thus heighten a person’s sexual attractiveness. Since women often claim that men are animals, perfume manufacturers got the bright idea of deriving the secretions from animals which they use to mark their territories as perfumes. Among the more popular secretions are the skunk-like spray of the civet cat, the castrum from the peri-anal glands of beavers (Drakkar Noir sounds much better than Eau de Peri-Anal), the musk from the genitalia of the male musk deer and, as if wearing secretions wasn’t humiliating enough, the ever-popular boar urine. Among all those secretions, boar urine appears to be the most potent – once female pigs get a whiff of his urine they arch their back to demonstrate their willingness to mate.
So, to all my readers who are part of the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSB) fraternity, there are two divergent strategies you can employ to meet your reluctantly ideal mate: First, forsake hygiene as it is an imperialist concept and lock yourself in a room with no ventilation for several days. When your odor is full-bodied enough to murder innocent cockroaches, you know you are ready to mark your territory. Do not be afraid to proceed to the most crowded bar possible as lesser men will run away at the mere fragrance of you. Find the woman that you have pining for, wrestle her to the ground, and thrust your armpits fully into her nose. If she arches her back, you will know that she is immediately smitten by you. However, if instead you put that woman into a coma, you will be sent to the US for lab testing, smeared full of female hamster secretions, and placed in a cage with several thousand virgin male hamsters.
Otherwise, you can take the other route of spending a ridiculous amount of money that could otherwise repay for our national debt and drown yourself in cologne that smells like animal genitalia and urine to attract the opposite sex. However, what the perfume manufacturers fail to mention is that, although they are sure that animal secretions will get some animals to arch their backs for you, they aren’t sure if these secretions will work on human females. But even if the cologne doesn’t help you attract the opposite sex, you needn’t worry. There are probably still some lonely female boars out there.
Welcome to dating in the 21st century. Men spray themselves with anal secretions to make themselves more attractive. No wonder women think men are a$&holes.
(Originally published in Manila Times on June 26, 2005)