Warning: Do not rub chocolate on your body. Let me do it for you. No, what I am trying to say is that the stuff is better on the inside of your body than the outside. How come? Well, your humble narrator courageously did an experiment after getting lots of mail from readers about Axe chocolate-flavored body spray.
The product, called Dark Temptation, is not available in all countries, but several readers, including Sheila Jade of Hong Kong, wanted to know where to buy it.
Sorry, Sheila, this is serious guy stuff. The idea is that since women worship chocolate, logically speaking they should leap on men who smell of it. Sara Wan told me there's a TV ad in which a guy sprays himself with Dark Temptation and turns into a chocolate man, pursued by women. The ad was censored in India, reader Vaibhav Chadha told me, because one female bites the chocolate man's bottom. It all sounded rather fun.
A reader who better be unnamed said he had been unable to find Dark Temptation (or a woman) and wanted to know if a guy could just rub actual chocolate on his body. "Can you try it and report back?" he asked. "Also, what brand should I use?"
Honestly, the things I do for science! First, I discovered an application problem. M&Ms are useless: the hard shell doesn't melt. Ferraro Rocher chocolates are scratchy. High-class dark chocolate leaves a stain like dried blood on your neck and ruins your shirt collar. Your best bet is KitKat. You rub your finger on it until it gets a bit melty, and then smear it on your body. If you have pale skin, hide it behind your ears and under your watch-strap.
Did women leap on me? No more than usual. Or, to put it another way, not at all. Towards the end of the morning, one female did sit closer to me than normal, and seemed to be inhaling deeply through her nose. Was she getting a waft of cocoa bean essence? Possibly. However, she ended the conversation abruptly and walked off in the direction of the nearest convenience store. All I'd managed to do was make her hungry, I think.
At lunchtime, I re-applied "eau de KitKat" to my neck and wrists and wandered the streets. No one took any notice. There was a conspicuous lack of bottom-biting in the area. I had never before realized just what a dull society I live in.
Later in the afternoon, a colleague told me she had located an uncensored copy of the Dark Temptation TV ad. I was shocked to see that the bottom-biting incident was just part of a general pattern of violence. The ad ends with the chocolate man having his arm torn off by a woman who drives off with it. Eww. That's when I decided that smelling like a large, two-legged KitKat may not be entirely safe. I raced to the bathroom to wash it off.
Back at my desk, I received a message from reader Leo Lam who met a woman who used chocolate spray and he did feel like biting her. But that may have just been Leo. Thomas Seifert proposed an alternative idea: "Hang a lamb chop from a string around your neck. At least the dog will play with you."
The writer is a columnist and journalist.
