Yet another discerning community…

    I’ve been thinking that I want to try wearing some
sort of cologne recently. I tried a sample of something or other the
other day and it was nice to smell good:-) The store has two walls of windows, and no matter what time of the year it is, the sun beams in and I end up sweating during at least part of the day. When I tried that sample the scent seemed to get reactivated when I heated up, and that’s a lot better than gold old fashioned sweat smell… Of course most guys that do
wear something don’t smell good at all, they either wear something
really nasty (Brut, Old Spice, Axe, etc.) and/or they just wear too
much. I’m going to try to avoid that.
    I’ve never done this before and I think it’s because I think that
just about everything smells like JC Penny’s or Macy’s fragrance
section. It always seemed so weird to smell like  “X”. It’s like
smelling like soap or laundry detergent except you put it on
intentionally. The very worst in my eyes are the easily identifiable
“designer” fragrances. The main appeal of them is that you have the
“good taste” to know who Calvin Klien, Tommy Hilfiger, or even Britney
Spears is. I started to look for some interesting stuff and happened
upon Basenotes.net. We’ve all heard of wine connoisseurs, audiophiles (cough cough), and gourmets, but these guys are fragrence connoiseurs!
    Like all the rest of the connisours, they have their
own ideas of what is “good”, but they all value complexity and the
combination of scents. It is interesting to hear of them talking about
“notes”. Perfumes have top notes, middle notes, and base notes. The top
is what you smell right when it is sprayed, the middle is what it turns
into, and the base is what the middle turns into over time. This
explains why I hate so many department store fragrances, they only have
one note, and not a very good one at that… So I’m intrigued, I’ve
ordered a few samples and I’ll see what I think. Don’t worry, I don’t
see myself becoming a cologne nerd. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it
and secondly, it just isn’t all that important to me. I get a lot of
pleasure from auditory stimulation, and to a lessor extent visual. Some
people get that sort of enjoyment from their olfactory senses. I think
that I’ll be the nasal equivalent of someone with a Sony receiver and
Bose speakers, I won’t buy the worst stuff, but I can’t appreciate or
afford the best stuff.

Isaac