YOU CAN CALL HER
GOOSE
written by David Baker
For about the last 8 years, my mother, for Christmas, Easter, Arbor Day, and Columbus Day, has bought a can of Axe or Tag or other 3-letter body spray for my brother and me. Around our house, buying the newest, hippest “I’m pathetic, but please have sex with me,” scent for the male children is the way we celebrate everything from the immaculate conception to the rape and pillage of the Caribbean Islands. It’s how Columbus would have wanted it.
I’m not sure what the motivation is behind these gifts. There’s no doubt my mom has an interest in not rearing the stinky kid on the block. This could be her subtle way of sending a message about my lackluster record of personal hygiene. I’m not so sure about that, though. If she was just interested in keeping me smelling more human, and less like a half-decomposed animal carcass dipped in shit and deep-fried in petuli oil, she’d just go with something strong and musky, like Brut, or just some delousing powder. The fact that my mother — confronted with a bevy of less erotic deodorizing options — picks a product that markets itself as nothing more than a sex aid, suggests there’s something more to her purchase.
I think she’s trying to be my wingmom.
It sounds weird to think of your mother as the person riding shotgun on your quest to lose the mundane, pathetic, soul-sucking void that is your life in a sea of used condoms and post-coital awkward silences.
And I’m aware that saying “wingmom” conjures up an almost cringe-worthy image:
Me, dressed in a polo shirt, with some pheromone-injected hair gel (yes, that really exists) and some vintage jeans — vintage in the sense that I’ve had them since 1997 when I was the fat kid in seventh grade. My mom is looking like an angel in an apron.
The two of us wander into some dank, poorly lit dive bar. She’s going around introducing me to women using lines like, “It took him a few years to potty train, but he’s mommy’s big boy, now.” “He’s almost lost all of that baby fat.” “We thought he was a girl when he came out because his penis was so small. It’s bigger now. I know because I washed him in the sink the other day.”
But my mom doesn’t operate that way. Her body spray purchases are a much, much subtler form of wingmomming.
Never for a second have I thought that by hosing myself down with Lusty Secretion I would even slightly increase my ability to coerce women into sleeping with me. Will it make me gag and cough uncontrollably? Yes. Rid my apartment of termites, roaches, small rodents, and Bible salesmen? Yes. Get my penis touched on a more frequent basis? Hell no.
My mom seems to buy into the oversexed ad campaign. She watches commercials that show sweaty, greasy guys douching themselves with PheroMoan and immediately getting molested by a flock of ravenous, half-shirt-wearing girls in heat who want to put the guy into a sex-induced coma, and my mom says, “I bet my son would like that to happen to him.” Then, totally manipulated by advertising, and with her better judgment drugged by motherly love, she goes out and buys me a bottle of this stuff. The good news is the ad campaign is working — in this case, on the wrong demographic.
It’s weird to even think that my mom wants me to have sex. Maybe her grandma clock is ticking. I don’t know. But, what can I say, my mom knows her son.
Although she may understand that the amount of sex I’m having directly correlates with my happiness, she doesn’t grasp the full extent of my sexual ineptitude. God bless my mom, she’s completely blinded by a maternal connection to her beer-gut-having, victim-of-early-onset-male-pattern-baldness, smooth-like-a-cheese-grater, user-of-words-like-correlate, over-user-of-hyphenated-modifiers, fashion-victim of a son. She thinks my smell is the only thing keeping me from achieving coital satisfaction on a grander scale — once a year, instead of once every presidential term. The smell is a small, insignificant piece in the incredibly large, complex puzzle that is my celibacy. It’s not even a border piece. Focusing on my smell is like worrying about the cup holders in a car when there are no wheels, engine or doors.
Keeping me coated, head-to-toe, in an oaky, floral façade is her go-to wingmomming move, but it’s not the only thing in her repertoire.
It was a hot day in late August when I left for college. My Jeep, packed tight with all of the things I’d need to survive college — Simpsons’ poster, jet fighter Trapper Keeper, 13 bottles of Axe —idled in the driveway, and I was bidding farewell to my family. It was the grand exit from the nest. The last opportunity to impart knowledge before the young of the species is released into a dangerous, new habitat filled with “Save Darfur” T-shirts that reek of cheap bud, and that closely resembles Hill Valley under Biff’s rule.
“You make sure to wear a condom,” my mother said. “Girls say they’re on birth control, but they’re not. They lie. So just always wear a condom.”
“Thanks, mom. I love you, too.”
David Baker is a writer from Salt Lake City.
Visit his blog at www.themandiary.com.