Does Michael Jackson Know About These?

Do your fingers smell like gasoline? Are friends and loved ones beginning to wonder if you’re moonlighting at the corner Chevron station?

You have become an unwitting victim of the self-service gas station. Although self-service may be cheaper and faster, it can also leave your hands smelling like gasoline for the rest of the day, not to mention that it can ruin your fingernail polish.

Philip Belous, a former hospital business executive, knew the problems of self-service gas stations all too well.

“I’d be all dressed up to go to a meeting and I’d have to stop for gas,” Belous said. “I’d go to the meeting and sit there for an hour smelling like a gas pump.”

So, he and some partners got together and developed the Gas Handy Super Glove. The fleeced jersey work glove is coated with nitrile, a rubberlike substance advertised to be liquid-proof and resistant to heat and tears. Belous said the Super Glove can be used for pumping gas and for such roadside emergencies as changing a tire or twisting off a red-hot radiator cap.

Super Glove is now available in only a few stores (it will appear citywide soon). But the glove is sold by mail and can be ordered in small, medium or large, left- or right-handed, for $4.98 plus $1 shipping per single glove. The address is: Gas Handy Inc., 12304 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 300, Los Angeles, 90025.