hemingway.

I came across a Scentsy booth this week. Scentsy advertises itself as wickless scented candles. It seems we have crossed a line where the point of candles is no longer light, but smell. I would argue that it's time for a new word, since there are times when I'm definitely going to want a candle with a wick. In a power outage, for instance. A wickless candle won't do me any good at all then, not even to set a nice mood for any power outage romance, because you have to plug it in.

For those of you who are still baffled as to what a wickless scented candle is, I'll explain. You buy a little ceramic pot that plugs into an outlet. Inside is a low-watt bulb, 15 - 25 watts. You then put some wax in the pot, and as the wax melts from the bulb, it gives off a nice smell. Basically, it's a plug-in air freshener with a nightlight.

I am not a scented candle person. I've owned a couple in the past, but I never end up using them. I never think to light them, and more often than not, the scents are overpowering. For my birthday last year, some girls recommended to Josh that he buy me scented candles. They were horrified to find out that he was buying me an entertainment center. I guess they expected him to get me something romantic and girly, as opposed to finding me something that I'd actually want and use. Scented candles are what you buy for people that you don't know very well, the kind of generic gift that is sure to both not offend and not excite. If a guy I had been dating for four years bought me a scented candle, I think I'd cry.

The Scentsy booth is fragrant, as you might expect. They had little jars sitting out so you could get a whiff of their different waxes. After a few sniffs, I found that I needed some sort of nose palette cleanser to differentiate. Not only were all the smells starting to run together, the inside of my nose felt vaguely irritated, as if I'd been chopping jalapenos and then picked my nose without washing my hands first.

All the different scents had names, of course. Some of them were pretty standard - you can predict from the name what Baked Apple Pie and Cinnamint might smell like. Others were a little more questionable. Is French Lavender very different from, say, Italian Lavender? And while Satin Sheets certainly evokes a nice feeling, I'm not getting much of a smell memory from it.

But the majority of the names gave you absolutely no indication of what the scent inside might be. For instance, Autumn Sunset, Welcome Home, or Oxford. I have no idea what those things are supposed to smell like. And Echo? Really? That sounds like a thought question in a crappy new-age self-help book: What does an echo smell like?

My favorite Scentsy name (not to be confused with my favorite Scentsy scent, which was Thunderstorm) was Hemingway. It's part of the Scentsy Man collection, made to appease husbands who object to their wives buying candles that don't do any good in a power outage. The catalog describes Hemingway thus: "Rich, ripe apples and warm, woody accents of sandalwood and cedar with hints of spice." I smelled it, but I don't remember all that. However, I had sniffed half a dozen jars by then and my nose was very confused in general. In any case, it was nothing like what I expected Hemingway to smell. I expected tobacco and scotch, with accents of gunpowder and a hint of dead fish. It would be a manly smell, maybe a little too manly for the likes of a wickless scented candle. I imagine that ole Ernest would not be particularly pleased with the idea of being the namesake of a Scentsy wax, any more than I would be pleased to receive scented candles as a gift from someone who ought to know me better.

Here's your thought question for the day: What would your Scentsy wax smell like?