I Always Hate Going In There
Nobody should be getting migraines from buying deodorant,
but here I am: clenching my senses in agony
amidst Wal-Mart's museum of aromatic push-pops,
sporting a woefully agnostic disposition in the realm of olfactology.
Everyone's got an opinion, just like everyone's got a nose.
Who am I to assume that my purchase will universally dub me
the patron saint of smelling awesome?
Humanity has never smelled concretely good,
it's only smelled better than before,
when our armpits screamed galactic fumes of sulfuric tar
through brambly follicles sheltered 'neath cotton sleeves.
The cure? My curse.
Typically, this self-argument would solve itself
by simply donning the safari garments of a bargain hunter, but prior experience
with Right Guard transformed my underarms into a family of hairy slugs.
Those glorified poachers in the marketing department suckered me into thinking that
I would smell like the Arctic and using the official deodorant of the NBA
would lead to me playing bumper pool with my new pal Kobe.
Such misdirection can, too, be found in the advertising playbook of AXE.
The television promised me a pre-programmed female stampede to chase me down an interstate,
but all I got was two swatches of chalky skin and a wallet that echoes.
But rumination isn't absolving my biological malfeasance, so the hunt progresses.
Why would anyone of reasonable consciousness buy the nostril-singeing Brut?
All the flapper girls in the world are now topsoil, so what's the appeal?
And I know better than to trade currency for the services of Old Spice.
The resultant red rashy bite-sized skiing moguls convinced me that
rubbing myself with aged coriander might likely prove a more fruitful endeavor.
Speed Stick Ocean Surf Deodorant. Net Wt 3 Oz (85g).
Am I to assume that these antiperspirant barons have actually encapsulated
the ocean into something that's supposed to make me smell better?
Have they smelled the ocean? The biting atmospheric marinade
of seagull waste, simmering snow cones and straight-from-the-periodic-table sodium?
Not even close! Their idea of oceanic, as represented by this tube
of waxy cerulean dough is more akin to Freon-glazed honeydew.
Still, though, I see no gaudy endorsements, I'm not breaking out in hives,
my nostrils don’t have fire in them and I feel financially ambivalent. Sold!
