Swine flu! Chrysler! Susan Boyle!

You’d think from the above headline that this blog post would be super-topical. But you’d be wrong. Because it’s really about lotion. It’s just that every lotion headline I came up with was either boring or vulgar. Like I’m using a lot more lotion as I get older. Or I’ve been keeping myself pretty moist lately. Or My cupcakes are moist and delicious. Or even, simply, Moist!

In any case, it seems I’m solidly into my Lotion Phase.

It started innocently enough; I went to a dermatologist a few years ago to have some suspect moles excised, and she informed me gravely that I have problematically dry skin on my face … and that at my age I really should be slathering my mug in a protective layer of sunscreen anyway. Because I’ll never be a teen model if I have a dry, wrinkly face.

So I went to my friendly neighborhood H2O+ and stumbled out a few hundred dollars later with a complete Face Oasis™ collection of cleansers, moisturizers, eye creams and sunscreens. But I didn’t get the toner. That seemed a little too gay. And then I actually started using all the stuff I bought. Which is totally out of character for me; I’d always felt a bit superior to other homos because I could be in and out of the shower, dried and dressed in little more than five minutes. There was no foo-foo homo stuff slowing down my morning ablutions!

But these new lotions changed everything. First of all, they actually seemed to work. My face soon felt smoother and moister and I started looking less and less like I’d been beaten with a waffle iron at a prayer breakfast. Plus the Face Oasis™ line smells so damn good—it’s clean and fresh in a clinical, totally non-foo-foo way … like store-brand soap or swimming-pool chlorine or doctor’s office floor cleaner. And what man doesn’t want his eyes to smell like the room where he sometimes pees in a cup?

But it turns out that Face Oasis™ is a gateway lotion. Because once I became addicted to the slightly chlorinated smell of my own nose, I headed straight back to H2O+ to see what other lightly scented elixirs of moist youth I could buy. Like exfoliating sea marine body wash. And pumice foot scrub. And body butter. And clearwater drenching lotion.

And now it can take me a full 20 minutes just to shower … and that’s on the days I’m not exfoliating my feet.

So … uh … my name’s Jake. And I’m a lotion addict. (“Hi, Jake!”)

And my cupcakes are moist and delicious.