My sexual awakening happened in the 1990’s, just as Calvin Klein’s ‘One’ unisex cologne was taking off everywhere, and his androgynous black and white ad campaigns with Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg were all the rage. Marky Mark never did much for me; my attention was grasped by this male model’s non-gaze and prone pose for Davidoff’s ‘Zino’ cologne, so much so that I bought it blindly, without trying it on, and it was a bum decision that I have regretted ever since. (Kids, don’t try this at home, despite what this post says.)
Davidoff was responsible for ‘Cool Water’ which, being the good burgeoning gay boy I was in the 90’s, was a staple for my earliest fragrance forays, right next to Curve by Liz Claiborne. I think you can still find both at your local CVS or Walgreen’s. I shamefully digress… but that was the ghastly initiation into cologne that most of us had at the time. (Tom Ford wasn’t even the Creative Director at Gucci then.)
When I got the bottle of Zino back to my dorm room, and discovered its less-than-desirable odor, I decided not to waste it and instead put it to work as part of my own little ‘Sex’ project, directly inspired by Madonna. More on that, and her, later this fall when we properly pay homage to her ‘Erotica’ period and its 30th anniversary this October. Back then, it was all new, as was this Nick Scotti song on which she sang back-up. It was originally written for her, but she gave it to him and only appears as a backing vocalist. Somehow, even that small contribution gives it the Madonna magic that was in full effect in the early 90’s.
I put this song on a mix tape I made for that ‘Sex’ project, because in the early 90’s that’s what we were still doing. A playlist was an unfathomable idea way back then, and we were limited to the 90 minutes of a double-sided cassette tape. That was more than enough time to aurally get off, and this song kicked off such an aural extravaganza as my friends opened their mail to xeroxed images of me in and out of my Calvins. Baby steps for a budding project-maker.
While I’d like to say that I did it all for a driving creative desire to flesh out the fantasies running through my mind, that is only partially true. A significant impetus for why I did it all, and perhaps why I still do it, was to make sure that my friends – the people who meant the most to me during those treacherous high school years I almost didn’t survive – would not forget me. If I assigned myself with things that they would see or experience – such as Madonna, or a cologne ad and fragrance that would take the mainstream media by storm – then maybe they would remember me. A childish, futile effort, to be sure, but one that I took up with all the fanfare and hoopla of a proper pop culture lightning strike.
As for Zino by Davidoff, it only ever got to be the signature fragrance of that ‘Sex’ project release, scenting the writing and photos I sent out to my friends during the month of October in the year of our Lord 1993. 
