Unscented

So I’m in the aisle.

You know the aisle. Foot powder on one side. The stick that tells you your whole life is about to change on the other. Whoever built that planogram was either a genius or a monster.

And there it is. Eye level. Bold letters on a little box.

UNSCENTED.

Condoms.

I stood there a while. Long enough for a kid to ask his mom what I was doing. She said I was shopping. I was not shopping. I was recalibrating.

(And nobody’s asking the follow-up. Kid, buddy. Look around. Why is SHE here? What errand brings a woman to this particular six feet of shelving? The foot powder? Sure. Let’s all say it’s the foot powder. Mom has stinky flippers. Meanwhile I’m the exhibit. I’m the one getting narrated. Ask your mother a question sometime, that’s all I’m saying.)

Because unscented is a CLAIM, dear reader. Unscented is a selling point. Nobody brags about unscented unless the alternative is out there somewhere... wearing cologne... waiting.

Who complained? That’s my question. Somebody complained. Somebody filled out a card. Somebody called an 800 number and said the words out loud to a stranger named Deb.

And then somebody ELSE had to write it down.

I picture a conference room in Akron. Bad carpet. A guy named Duane Kettleman clicks to slide four. “Folks, we’ve got a nose problem.” And forty people nod, because they all know. They’ve known for years. They just never said it in a room with a projector.

Okay, but here’s where I got stuck.

Which nose?

Is this a you problem? A them problem? Is there a third party in the room I don’t know about? Because if the answer is “everybody,” then we have all been quietly complicit in something, and I’d like the CDC to say a few words.

The CDC does not want to say a few words. The CDC has a guy now.

And I know exactly how it goes if I call. Somebody puts me on hold, and forty minutes later RFK Jr. picks up, and he’s not going to answer the question; he’s going to tell me the question is downstream of the seed oils. He’s going to bring up the water. He’s going to get around to raw milk in a way I won’t see coming and won’t be able to argue with, because I’ve never once won an argument against a man who is that sure and that hoarse.

Then he’ll take his shirt off. Not for a reason. That’s just where these things end up.

And I’ll hang up, and I still won’t know whose nose it was.

I called Karie in. Held up my phone with the product page on it.

She looked. She looked longer. She handed the phone back.

“Sure,” she said.

That’s it. That’s the whole response. Fifteen years together, nine of them married, and the woman has a resting deadpan you could park a truck on.

Anyway. I did the research so you don’t have to, which is a sentence I use to justify roughly ninety minutes of every day.

The scents are real. They’re out there. Vanilla. Strawberry. Something called Cool Mint, which sounds less like romance and more like a dental procedure. There’s a chocolate one. There’s a banana one. There’s a bubblegum one, and I’d like to formally register that bubblegum is a CHILDHOOD flavor and we should all take a beat.

And yes. Before you write in. The bubblegum ones are in the Epstein files.

I did not go looking for that. Nobody goes looking for that. You type four words into a search bar on a Sunday afternoon in your own home, wearing pants you’ve had since GWB, and the machine hands you a page number, and now you know a thing you will carry to your grave and possibly past it.

Everything’s in there. Every product. Every guy. Every flight, every folder, every receipt from every gift shop in the Western Hemisphere. At this point I assume my library card is in there. I assume there’s a page that just says BRIAN, LOOKED UP CONDOMS, SUNDAY.

Because that’s the thing nobody’s saying. This is the 1980s coming back for us.

We were RAISED on this. Scratch-n-sniff stickers. Mr. Sketch markers, and don’t tell me you didn’t huff the black one, the licorice one, we all did, we were animals. Bonne Bell Lip Smackers in Dr Pepper. Strawberry Shortcake dolls that smelled like a jam factory fire. A whole generation trained from age six that if a thing does not smell like fruit, the thing is broken.

And then we grew up. And we got jobs. And apparently a few of us went into product development.

I’m not judging. I’m saying there’s a CAREER PATH.

Here’s what really gets me though. Unscented isn’t neutral. Unscented is a response. Unscented is the guy at the party going “no, I’m good, I’m driving.” It exists only because of the party.

So somewhere, in some warehouse in a state I’ve never driven through, there are pallets of bubblegum ones and pallets of nothing ones. Same building. Same forklift guy. Doug. Doug has seen things.

And Doug goes home at night, and his wife asks how work was, and Doug says fine.

Fine, honey.

Just fine.

I keep circling one more thing, and then I’ll let it go.

Unscented is not the same as odorless.

Those are two different words, and they picked the softer one on purpose. Odorless means there’s nothing there. Unscented means nobody ADDED anything. It’s still got a native situation. A house smell. A factory note. Whatever the raw material was doing before marketing showed up.

Which means the honest label, the one nobody’s going to print, is something like AS-IS.

Or NO NOTES OF ANYTHING.

Or, and I’d buy these immediately, WHATEVER.

I bought the unscented ones. Obviously. I’m a coward, and I was in public.

Got home, put the bag on the counter, went out to move the hose. Came back in twenty minutes later and Trouble was standing in the kitchen with a look on her face I would describe as legally ambiguous.

Bag was empty. Box was under the table. Box was open.

Now. A pig in the kitchen is already a policy failure, I understand that. We’ve had the conversation. The conversation went nowhere. But she’s 158 now, up two from the lollipop incident, and I can’t in good conscience pin those two pounds on my new box that weighs less than a slice of bread.

The vet said it’ll pass. Her exact word. Pass.

So now we wait. Me and Karie and a 158-pound pig with a full dozen latex novelties working their way through the system like a parade float.

Best case, she toots out a giraffe. Maybe a little poodle. A sword, if she’s showing off.

Somebody’s kid’s birthday party, but from a pig.

And hopefully... please... unscented.

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I could use a coffee

Brian Gerard (Lewandowski)

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