Maybe I just need a change, maybe I just need a new cologne

It's a very weird feeling when the woman you have paid to mess about with your Good China stops her work to compliment you on the scent of your cocoa butter moisturiser.

HER: Did you use coconut shower wash or something?
ME: Uh... what?
HER: Did you use coconut shower wash?
ME: Oh, um... uh yeah cocoa butter moisturiser maybe?
HER: Ahh, it smells nice.
ME: Um... (thinking: please God let me out of here)

At the time I was so busy gritting my teeth against the pain - and, just to be clear, the woman I'm talking about here is a bikini waxer, not a high class hooker - that I couldn't really come up with what felt like an appropriate response. Obviously it was a simple enough compliment, mindless chatter even, but it felt weird, like a doctor stopping mid-pap smear to say you have lovely eyes.

It also felt weird because I couldn't remember the last time someone had complimented the way I smelt, or the last time I had complimented anyone else on the way THEY smelt.

By coincidence, shortly afterwards I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a bit who smelt, I don't know how else to say it, amazing. I have no idea what it was that made him smell that way but it smelt like freshly cut grass mixed with a little bit of sweat and... it was a delight. This friend is a cute enough guy but this scent, whatever it was, made him seem suddenly sort of hot. Needless to say I didn't tell him any of this because it would have been, you know ten types of weird.

Which brings me to my point: why do so few men seem to wear cologne or aftershave anymore? I have to have coffees or lunches with a lot of random men as a result of my job and most of the time I don't notice the way they smell until - blammo - I sit down to someone who smells great. I'm not talking bathed in scent but just sort of... faintly delicious in a subtle way that means you only get a whiff of it every now and again. Most of these guys I meet through work are the opposite of what I find attractive in a boy/man but the smell thing - and maybe partly the fact that you know they've gone through the ritual of aftershave or cologne instead of just rolling out of bed and spraying on deoderant - is super appealing.

You'd be hard pressed to find a girl who doesn't own a perfume or two or, at the very least, a scented moisturiser to be dutifully slapped on, but so few boys I know even bother. No doubt if they realised how much ussy-pay they're missing out on as a result all this would change.