The Man Who Ate Everything (20 page)

But now Erox claims that ER-670 and ER-830 have only a modest sensual effect, making female subjects feel warmer and more open and male subjects feel more confident and self-assured. This is a far cry from the stiffened legs and cocked ears of the sow. Despite the 1991 article, everybody at Erox now says that the discovery of a compelling human attractant would have been a nightmare, at least for the marketing people. The only nightmare I can picture is that they could not have found enough wheelbarrows in all of Salt Lake City to carry their profits to the bank.

Thus far, Erox has no statistically persuasive evidence that its perfumes have even these mild sensual effects. Erox has not scientifically compared its fragrances with and without the pheromones or against some popular but conventional perfumes. It is almost as though Erox were wary of learning the results. Wearing its perfume might turn out to be little different from dabbing yourself with a conventional fragrance while drinking a frosty martini.

Nearly all the major perfumes sold in this country—whether by Calvin Klein, Giorgio, Estee Lauder, or others—are formulated at one of six fragrance companies (also known as essential-oil houses) in or around New York City by a tiny group of extremely talented “noses,” or perfumers, and each contains between two hundred and four hundred ingredients. Following the customary practice, Erox’s president, Pierre de Champfleury (former head of Yves Saint-Laurent fragrances and cosmetics in Paris), and consultant Ann Gottlieb (to whom many attribute the success of Calvin Klein’s Obsession, Eternity, and Escape) wrote a “brief” and submitted it to three of the six major fragrance companies. A brief explains the idea behind a prospective scent, the aura that it is supposed to create, and sometimes even its name, the appearance of the bottle and packaging, its intended position in the market, and how it will be advertised.

The three companies responded with preliminary samples of the desired scents, and Champfleury and Gottlieb chose two: the female perfume from Firmenich and the male fragrance from Givaudan-Roure. (Both companies will supply only the essential oil to Erox; the formulas remain their intellectual property.) The fine-tuning that ensued was more complicated than usual because the pheromones stayed in Salt Lake City; each scent could be tinkered with only after the people in Salt Lake had added the appropriate pheromone and shipped it back to New York. Erox’s perfumes contain no musk or civet or castoreum—Berliner’s human pheromones replace the usual animal attractants. One dose is meant to emit the same quantity of human pheromone as is given off by a completely naked body.

As we had agreed before I flew out to Salt Lake City, Jennings-White allowed me to try preliminary versions of the Erox pheromone perfumes, to be called Realm for Women and Realm for Men. I chose the back of my left hand for the male scent and the back of my right hand for the female. The male scent was woodsy and spicy though light and simple-hearted; the female scent was warm and cozy with an initial floral impression and an underlying Oriental character. Hundreds of times in the next three days I sniffed at the back of both my hands, much preferring the female scent to the male. Does this mean that I am a lesbian?

Despite all of Erox’s disclaimers, I desperately clung to the hope that I was wearing an overpowering sexual attractant. I wondered how I would explain to my wife back in New York that, after supper, in the parking lot next to the restaurant where the Erox scientists and I had dined, I had been overcome by a band of beautiful women, dragged into one of those recreational vehicles so popular in Utah, and mated with repeatedly until I was of no further use. What would this do to our marriage? In truth, I was ten times more anxious about my right hand, with its male attractant, and wore a glove during all waking hours until the scent had finally dissipated.

Dinner and my walk through the parking lot were uneventful. Back at the hotel, I lounged around in various strategic locations and took careful notes on whether I was attracting anybody. In the coffee shop, I had a hard time attracting even a waiter of either sex.

I moved to the bar, where I chose a seat with empty stools on both sides, ordered a Scotch, and waited. A few Scotches later, observing that the stools were still empty, I moved on to the hotel desk, where two young blond women in concierge outfits had just come on duty. I pretended that I needed their help in making elaborate plans for skiing in Park City, and, as we pored over maps and brochures, I made certain that my ungloved left hand was broadcasting its irresistible message. Then I retired to my room and waited for one of the young women to telephone for
an assignation. But Erox had been true to its word. Neither pheromone seemed to be a sexual attractant. When I returned to New York with the two scents still active on opposite hands, my wife said that I smelled like a magazine.

A month or so later, when I heard that the Erox perfumes had been further refined, I requested the latest version of the scent for men. This would contain ER-830, the pheromone that, Erox claims, makes the male wearer feel more sensual. I wonder whether ER-830 deserves the name of pheromone, which is, strictly speaking, a chemical that communicates a message between one member of a species and another, not between a man and himself. ER-830 is more like an airborne hormone. Perhaps this scent should be called Onan for Men.

In any event, the odor of the male fragrance had been much improved. Now it was more complex, with an initial impression of bright spiciness over warmer and more sensual notes. I cannot say with certainty whether the Erox male fragrance had any effect on my mood. My wife reported that I seemed consistently more romantic and, on one occasion, that I had not kissed her that way for weeks. But without further investigation, I cannot decide whether my behavior should be attributed to wearing ER-830 or to the fact that I was spending sixteen hours a day reading about the mating habits of pigs and golden hamsters. Do you realize that in the languages of the Maori, Samoans, and Eskimos, the word for kissing means “smelling”? At least that’s what I read somewhere.

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to find the idea of human pheromones extremely scary, mainly because they affect us unconsciously, without ever entering our awareness. One speaks loosely about “smelling” pheromones, but many of these messenger chemicals have no odor. We are unaware of them because they are perceived by an organ distinct from the receptors designed to sense a hot apple pie or Chanel No. 5, and their messages are transmitted deep into the brain, before our cortex has had a chance to register and follow or resist them.

How can we struggle against the changes these pheromones may be causing in us? How many of our decisions and actions are influenced by forces of which we are unaware, forces as menacing as the pods in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
Or as scary as an adolescent human male with a spray can of Spanish fly in his hand? Or, as Max Lake suggests, as frightening as a thousand Nazis at a rally raising their arms in unison, exchanging pheromones in a ritual of group intoxication?

On the brighter side, pheromones may account for some of the fun of kissing, especially the profound French kind. As a general rule, the human nose is positioned conveniently above the lips and, when pressed closely against one’s partner’s skin, is in a fine position to draw in whatever pheromones may be produced by the skin and in the saliva. This can also explain much of the joy of human snuggling.

But why would nature have provided us with a chemical like this? The answer is simple. Humans are the only mammals I can think of that are both gregarious and monogamous. For us, socialization is as important as sex. As Michael Stoddart points out in
The Scented Ape,
if a woman’s fertility were advertised by an irresistible pheromone that drew males from far and wide every twenty-eight days, monogamy would disappear and our social arrangements would give way to universal warfare. Much more useful is the pheromone that Berliner and his team at Erox claim to have discovered, a family-values pheromone, a chemical signal that makes us feel mellow and assured as we huddle together in small groups and sniff contentedly, without smelling a thing.

The Ice Between Courses

A few years ago, the
coup de milieu
was introduced to Paris, having been popular for a considerable time in Bordeaux and other maritime towns. … A young blond girl, aged between 15 and 19, wearing no ornament on her head and with her arms bare to above the elbow, serves each guest. She … should be a virgin if possible (though 19-year-old virgins are extremely rare in Paris).

—Grimod de La Reyniere, c. 1804

June 1993

When I arrived at the spanking-new Canyon Ranch in the Berkshire Mountains, I was coming down from an intense eating binge as
Vogue’s
monthly food correspondent. No sooner had I polished off a metric ton of mail-order Christmas treats than I was on a plane to Paris, where I had squeezed twenty-two restaurants into sixteen days. Then it was off to Texas, roaming between Dallas and Fort Worth in an extremely rewarding search for world-class barbecue joints. My weight had climbed into a new zone, and I was getting nervous about it. Five days later, Canyon Ranch had changed my life.

· From now on, I will always use conditioner after shampooing. The shower room had pump bottles of conditioner, which left my hair so much softer and easier to manage. Where have I been all these years?

· I will become a serious weight lifter. See below.

· I will strive to become merely chubby again. That was twenty pounds ago.

· Until then, I will wear sweatpants as often as possible. They bind and chafe less than regular trousers and slip on so much more easily.

· I will become a spa junkie, if I can afford the habit.

Canyon Ranch’s publicity material scientifically estimates that more than half of America’s population has heard of the
original Canyon Ranch in Tucson. I was vaguely aware that it was the first major coed fitness resort, not just another plush pamper palace exclusively for women. And that it was a magnet for socialites, movie stars, and CEOs, a lush oasis where you eat one thousand exquisite gourmet calories a day yet never go hungry. I also knew they were building a Canyon Ranch clone in Lenox, Massachusetts, near Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow and, for those like me who are old enough to care, Alice’s Restaurant. It opened on October 1.

Even if you’ve been a guest before (three out of four have), the first thing you get is a guided tour with lots of numbers: forty million dollars to build on 120 wooded acres, an inn for two hundred guests with 120 rooms and suites (each with a VCR), a spa with 100,000 gleaming square feet for fitness and health, an 1897 mansion called Bellefontaine for dining and wellness, thirty-two fitness classes daily, sixty massage therapists, three hundred staff members in all. Newcomers may find themselves winded before the end of the guided tour.

Next you fill out some medical forms. The final page strikes you as particularly bellicose and hypocritical. “Do you find yourself obsessing about food?” it asks. “Not at all,” you reply, “but I think about almost nothing else.” So, you soon realize, does everybody at Canyon Ranch, including the three hundred on staff.

Then you meet with a program adviser who guides you through a bewildering range of possibilities: aquatic fitness, aromatherapy, arthritis consultation, badminton, basketball, behavioral therapy, hiking, bingo, biofeedback, body composition, body contouring, breathing, cholesterol evaluation, clay treatment, cranial massage, cross-country skiing, European facial, food habit management, funk aerobics, handwriting analysis, high- and low-impact aerobics, hiking, hydrotherapy, hypnotherapy, inhalation, intensive treatment facial, Jacuzzi, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Lifecycles, Lunch & Learn, makeup, meditation, minitrampoline, nutrition counseling, posture and movement, racquetball, reflexology,
rhythms, rowing, running (indoor and out), salt treatment, sauna, shiatsu, snowshoeing, squash, steam room, stop smoking, stretching, Swedish massage, swimming, tennis, treadmills, volleyball, weight lifting, wellness counseling, whirlpool baths, yoga.

I was growing acutely anxious about exercising in public. I flashed back to those agonizing afternoons in summer camp on the dusty baseball diamond—where three of us were always dispatched to far right field and spent two hours in the blinding sun praying that the ball would never come our way. My wife could hardly wait. A dancer and star high-school sprinter in California when she was young, she doesn’t get much practice in either of them around me. She immediately signed up for a facial, three types of massage (cranial, sports, and shiatsu), body composition analysis, aromatherapy, and an herbal wrap, and filled in the rest of her schedule with classes in rhythm aerobics, flexibility, and strength training. Then she sprinted across the hall to the Canyon Ranch Showcase shop, unavoidable as you enter the spa building, where they sell athletic clothing, shoes, books, and tapes. She had not gone shopping for thirty-six hours and was beginning to show the strain.

As I had signed up for nothing but a late-afternoon tennis lesson (with an excellent pro), I rented a tape of
Tequila Sunrise
with Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, and Mel Gibson, and returned to our comfortable room after lunch. Except during meals, there is no coercion at Canyon Ranch, nobody following you around to make sure you are doing what you should.
Tequila Sunrise,
it turns out, is a much underrated film.