Rick jumped in his car to go for a test drive. Only it wasn't the car he was testing. It was his new Male Pheromone Spray, the secret love potion everyone has been talking about.

Just minutes before, he'd generously applied the sniff-and-snare concoction, hailed by its manufacturers as "instant sex appeal," to the back of his head.

First he drove to a shopping mall. Nothing happened. Then he decided to cruise some more. When he passed a Supercuts hair salon, he spontaneously decided to stop off and get a haircut.

Moments later, he reports, an attractive female hairstylist, whom he'd never seen before, was sensually massaging his head as she shampooed it.

What came next was what love potion peddlers call a "phero moment."

"I couldn't believe it -- she was saying so much stuff," Rick exclaims. "I asked her about her shoes, and she stuck her foot in my lap. At one point, she was rubbing her breasts against my back!"

Uh, OK but what kind of things was she saying?

"Well, she was talking about a lot of things," Rick replies. "For one thing, she talked about a Supercuts party that was coming up. She was inferring pretty strongly that she wanted me to go to the party with her.

"It was just so odd. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. She was nice-looking. And, well, I ain't no Robert Redford, if you know what I mean."

No, Rick is no Sundance Kid. And guess what? His name -- big surprise -- is not really Rick, either. It would appear that sexual aids, even one with the same marketing objective as virtually every perfume and cologne on the market, will forever be cloaked in a brown paper bag.

But that's not a bad thing. On the contrary, mystery and secrecy are the cornerstone of this product's appeal. One brand, called "The Scent," for men, is promoted on the net as "medical science's and nature's SEXUAL secret weapon of pleasure."

The Scent website goes on to inform would-be love sorcerers that "This is a perfectly legal sexual stimulant cleverly masked in a men's cologne that when unknowingly inhaled by any adult woman unblocks all restraints and fires up the raw animal sex drive in every woman."

Now think about it -- if people actually knew you were wearing a secret love potion to attract the opposite sex, it wouldn't be much of a secret, would it? Besides, some folks just might not understand. This might be going out on a limb a little here, but there just might even be, possibly, some ridicule involved. Or, at the very least, plenty of whispering.

OK, we understand. Rick shall remain Rick. But what happened with the hairstylist? Did she?

"Oh yeah, the story has an ending," Rick says under his breath. "We ended up going out. I'm not seeing her now, though. She ended up being too high-maintenance."

Ouch! Guess that's one of the drawbacks to possessing raw, boundless sex appeal. For the record, the hairstylist can't really be faulted. She was, after all, simply responding to her own uncontrollable lust, overwhelmed by Rick's irresistible, scientific, laboratory-tested animal magnetism. Hell, the poor girl didn't even know what hit her!

By the way, if you're reading this and are still wondering what the heck pheromones are, don't feel alone. Descriptions and claims are all over the place, especially on the Internet, where dozens of retailers claim that human pheromones have been scientifically proven to exist, and that they have bottled up this amazing-but-true discovery and can now make it available to you for the low, low price of only $19.95 a bottle! (Note: prices vary from brand to brand, most range anywhere from $19.95 to $99 a bottle.)

Pheromones:
Any of various chemical substances, secreted externally by certain animals, as ants, moths, etc., which convey information to and produce specific responses in other individuals of the same species.

Much of the pheromone literature you'll find on the net is steeped in sell copy, attempting to persuade you that human pheromones actually exist and that they really work. But the concept of pheromones is not new, of course.

The word itself was coined in the 1930s by Peter Karlson and Martin Luscher from the Greek word pherein, meaning to transfer; and hormon, which means to excite.

Pheromones have been used for decades to describe the chemical signals used between organisms and animals to stimulate sexual attraction or other predisposed responses.

According to Janet L. Hopson, in her book Scent Signals: The Silent Language of Sex, male houseflies will attempt to copulate with knotted shoelaces if they are first treated with the female's chemical lure. And many male insects will attempt to mate with two-dimensional silhouettes of females who have been similarly treated with attractants.

Wow! Does this mean some of our nation's college sorority houses should invest in a powerful insecticide? This pheromone stuff is all over the web by now, and we all know how prankish those frat rats can be.

Yet, the big Nobel question remains: Does this same response take place in humans?

Until recently, according to one pheromone website, biologists and physiologists believed that the vomeronasal organ (VNO), the nasal device in animals that detects pheromonal chemicals, was non-existent in humans, lost during embryonic development.

The human VNO's role is to detect chemical signals separately from the olfactory (smelling) system. It has its own separate pathway to the brain, which is said to explain why the chemicals that cause sexual attraction do not need to be smelled in order to stimulate sexual response. This, say pheromone retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers, opens up possibilities for secret love potions. And in a marketplace where sexual attractiveness rules, that's all they need.

"My partner and I were looking for something we could market on the Internet," says Suzie, who, incidentally, currently operates a business with Rick, called KS Productions. In operation for eight months, they sell pheromones for both men and women and are doing quite well.

"I was reading an article about pheromones on the plane and it just hit me -- that's it! Pheromones are perfect for the Internet."

Like Rick, Suzie is not really Suzie. She figures if people at her day job discovered that she sold pheromones, they might harass her, or maybe bug her for free samples.

Suzie says she was skeptical at first, but after reading more about the products, and particularly after her company's website started receiving orders, was convinced that she was selling something people want, and are willing to pay for.

"We're getting a lot of repeat orders now," she reveals. "The first order is always just one bottle. But the repeat orders are two and three bottles."

Suzie cites several "phero moments" of her own, to her the most convincing of which entailed a trip down an elevator with two vice presidents from her company. She was wearing her female pheromone spray that day, which apparently enchanted one of the VPs to move closer to her and brush up against her -- rather intimately, she recalls.

"I think that was the pheromones," she says. "I've met with this executive before, in his office, but nothing like that has ever happened."

In developing the website for KS Productions (www.pherozone.com), Suzie had to read and dig up scientific facts about pheromones to help establish credibility for her products' effectiveness, or least the possibility of their effectiveness.

One high-profile research project already popping up on pheromone web pages is a recently publicized study concluded by Martha McClintock, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

McClintock's findings, published in last month's issue of the journal Nature, evidently establish the first scientific proof for human pheromones, citing them as "compounds undetectable as odors, but which have a major impact on the timing of ovulation."

The study was conducted on 29 women ages 20 to 35. Samples were taken from nine of the women's armpits while they were in the early phase of their menstrual cycles.

When the samples were passed under the noses of the other 20 women, it caused 68 percent of them to accelerate and shorten their menstrual cycles.

Samples taken from the nine donors later in their menstrual cycles had the opposite effect on the recipient women -- it delayed and lengthened their menstrual cycles.

The bottom line: Yes, this study is encouraging, but even Dr. McClintock maintains that her breakthrough only points "to a need to expand scientific exploration on the existence of pheromones. Well-controlled studies of humans are now needed to determine whether there are other types of pheromones whose effects are as far-reaching in humans as they are in other species."

Dr. Frank Tabrah, a faculty member of the University of Hawaii's physiology department, agrees, claiming that much more research is needed to establish conclusive evidence.

"Physicians are watching this with great interest," Tabrah says. "The whole concept is an interesting possibility from a physiological point of view.

But very little work has been done in this area with humans. There has been very little controlled research.

"Right now there's a lot more sales effort going on than research effort. I'd say we're a long, long way from a clinical application."

Having said that, Tabrah admits that he won't be surprised if human pheromones are proven to exist. "In fact, I'd be astonished if they discover they don't exist," he says.

Until then, if you just can't wait for science to do its thing, if you're absolutely convinced that someone you're attracted to is just waiting for that special whiff that'll compel him or her to disrobe in the elevator and ravish you uncontrollably, then go ahead. It's your money.

If you'd like to keep that money circulating in Hawaii, Rick and Suzie's website features pheromone spray for men and women in 15-ml bottles for $29.95 each. Their company is located on Oahu, so you might get your potion a bit quicker.

Oh, and if you want them to mail the pheromones to you under an assumed name, don't worry -- Rick and Suzie will understand completely.