PlanetGordon.com

Dear Groom

I've received a lot of email lately from grooms, some offering compliments, some sharing similar experiences and some asking questions about planning. In the spirit of my gig as an advice columnist I'll answer some of those questions as they come in, in a new feature I'm calling, appropriately, "Dear Groom."

I'll start it off with an easy one.

Dear Groom,

What happened to your zit?

Jeremy

Ah, yes. The zit. Or "spot," as the British say. It's not suprising that a fellow groom would be concerned about skin problems. On the big day, no one wants to stand in front of relatives they haven't seen since they were a teenager looking like a teenager.

I was recently turned on to a line of men's skin care products called Zirh. L tells me I have a touch of the metrosexual in me - not that there's anything wrong with that - and I'm always game for trying new "product," as the Queer Eye guys might say.

So when I headed to London with a budding blemish, I applied copious amounts of Zirh's Fix, a lotion containing salicylic acid and other ingredients for fighting acne. I wondered what the people next to me on the plane thought as every hour I pulled the small blue and grey tube out of my carry-on bag and rubbed the lotion onto my forehead.

The product info claims that it is less drying that similar products, but my being on an airplane didn't give me much of a chance to test that claim. I fought off dehydration by downing the biggest bottle of water I could find at an airport store and then asking the flight attendants for refills during the flight. They obliged, but the gentleman sitting next to me was not so happy with the many times I had to climb over him to go to the bathroom.

In addition to becoming a human a sponge, I also used another Zirh product, Protect, which countered the drying affect of the air on the plane. So maybe it was the water, maybe it was the lotion, or maybe it was a combination of both, but by the time my flight landed at Heathrow, I sailed through customs zit-free.

For as much as I used during the flight, I still have a bit of Fix left. Since it worked better than anything I've seen since I was in junior high school, I will save it for the inevitable stress zit that will accompany my nervousness the week of the wedding.

Posted by The Groom at April 21, 2004 01:39 PM