Perhaps you remember the Great Internet Pheromone Craze of 2005.
Toward the end of last year, about one out of every six or seven spam e-mails was hawking some sort of product — a spray, a perfume, a body lotion, hell, I dunno, I didn't read the damn things — that would make you irresistible to members of the opposite sex, because of pheromones.
Pheromones are hormone-like substances that insects and other animals excrete as chemical signals, to convey danger, readiness to breed, etc., to others of its species. While humans cannot consciously smell pheromones, and whether or not we react on any level to chemical signals we're giving off has yet to be scientifically proven, we do possess a pheromone-detection device, the vomeronasal organ, in our noses. Apparently, the confirmation of the VNO's presence was enough to send would-be Web entrepreneurs scurrying into their laboratories (read: bathrooms, garages).
Ostensibly, it would go like this: A man or woman would spray on a little pheromone-loaded scent, head out to the bar, and strike up a conversation with a person far too wealthy, beautiful and self-assured to be seen with him or her. The wealthy, beautiful, self-assured person would tell the pheromone-wearer to fuck right off, and the pheromone-wearer politely would. But several minutes later, the pheromone-wearer would find the wealthy, beautiful, self-assured person at his or her elbow, apologizing for being so rude and inquiring if the pheromone-wearer would like to get out of the bar and find a suitable venue for some reciprocal oral action.
(Of course, the ads never played the fantasy out to its logical, ironic conclusion, in which, several weeks later, the pheromone-wearer is forced to bludgeon the now debased, broken, obsessed and pheromone-addicted conquest to death with a chair in self-defense.)
Not even those who still think Bill Gates is gonna send 'em a dollar for every test message they forward are dumb enough to buy a love potion on the basis of an anonymous e-mail, however. And by this past spring, the spam clogging our inboxes only very occasionally pimped some sort of pheromone-enhanced attractant. Most intelligent folks who gave it any thought at all probably realized there wasn't enough evidence to support the human pheromone theory, and rightly so.
But then, most intelligent folks haven't studied the bench outside of Daddy Kool Records, and the activity around it. It is because of the bench outside of Daddy Kool Records that I accept the effectiveness of human pheromones as a given.
I can't remember exactly when the city decided to paint all the benches along that section of Central Avenue, but I was still working at Daddy Kool at the time. It was neat: Each bench was painted in a different theme or mural style — colorful fish, positive phrases and upbeat abstractions appeared on the little rest stops for blocks. I don't know if I even consciously noticed the benches before they were painted, but I definitely noticed them afterward, not only because of the makeover, but also because more people, all kinds of people, were actually using them.
The bench out in front of Daddy Kool was different, though.
Only one kind of person ever seemed to use that bench.
The homeless, crazy kind.
I'm not talking about grizzled, unkempt men who stopped there to take a load off, panhandled a few quarters, and moved on. I'm talking about gibbering, hallucinating, terrifyingly broken souls, who camped at that bench, clung to it, made it the ring to their Gollum. I'm talking about the kind of men and women who argued passionately with thin air before falling asleep and using their pant leg as a bedpan.
Day after day I'd watch them, through the storefront window or while outside for a quick smoke. The ones coherent enough to ask for change demanded it, bellowed for it, haranguing those who wouldn't comply or, worse, pretended not to hear.
Sometimes we'd call the cops to run them off, because if we weren't allowed to masturbate in public, they shouldn't be able to either.
I'm not saying nobody else ever used that bench. I'm just saying I never saw anybody sitting on it during the day who wasn't two-thirds gone, and there was always at least one person sitting on it. (I can't even remember in what style it was painted, I so rarely saw the bench itself.)
And what's weirder, the young people who used it at night were inveterate hit-you-uppers as well, kids with homes and parents and cool clothes who felt somehow compelled to act like infinitely less fortunate downtown denizens when they got there. It was almost as if they were drawn to that bench, that they could sense the day's residue of madness and destitution, and that it vibrated harmoniously with something inside them.
After a while, I decided that was exactly what was happening.
Pheromones.
I haven't worked at Daddy Kool Records in five years. I stop in quite often, though, and the bench always seems to be home to the same sort of frightening/pitiable lives gone wrong. Just today, two very loud, very pungent men were parked there, as another, younger and bald, orbited it, slowing his circle at the same point in each revolution to gaze into the record store. I had to time my lunge for the door so that I didn't collide with him, like a meteor, perhaps causing catastrophic climate changes to his personal environment, and killing a large percentage of whatever happens to be living on him.
I think the homeless and unhinged have been sitting at the bench outside Daddy Kool Records for so long that a sense too fine to notice picks up something that lets them know it's OK, it's peace, it's home.
Now, how you turn that into something guaranteed to get you laid is a whole different matter entirely.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.