"Hello? Was I the only one paying attention? I thought it reeked." "I believe that was your Designer Imposter Perfume."*

    When I was in junior high I smelled like this:

It was actually shaped like an exclamation point. Get it? This was the basis of its appeal.

    And occasionally like this:

Barf. This stuff smells bad.

    Ew! Does anyone else remember these? Or the one my buddy Richie reminded me of:

Richie's sister used to wear it. So did I. It was cool because it had a cord inside. Like an electrical cord. Get it?

    I’m kind of surprised I had any friends at all at that time, seeing as I smelled like burning hair mixed with baby feces and Febreze, but then I also seem to remember that almost all the girls were smelling like some sort of Designer Imposter funk back then. It seems like it stayed that way until high school when all of a sudden everyone I knew smelled like ck One. A unisex “cologne.” Reek. Thank god that one was out of my price range.

A CK One Ad. Men and women, mostly topless. Get it? Because anyone can wear it.

    How about this: Sex Panther. Probably what I smelled like.

    If I really wanted to make a ton of money I’d design a scent for adolescents that neither stinks like a whore's bikini nor costs a month’s allowance. It would smell like something sweet and honest, like clean laundry or Cap’n Crunch or grass. (Actually, I think I used to wear a Gap perfume called “Grass.” I also wore something in high school that smelled like tomatoes. I was such a dirty hippie. When I didn’t smell like Nag Champa incense I smelled like top notes of patchouli and tomatoes with underlying hints of weed. Yum.)

    Nowadays I wear Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker (my sister, Elizabeth, wears it too) and I think I smell pretty good, but I may be in a rut. I’ve been wearing it for a good 7 years. But nothing else smells good on me. Once, when Richie and I were at the mall, I tried on Gucci II, because I had a friend who always wears it and smells delightful. But I ended up stinking like baby oil and bedpans. Scents truly do differ from person to person.

    Or maybe I’m just naturally malodorous. In which case it was never the perfume that really stank, but me.

*Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995). This movie was made around the time I was actually wearing Designer Imposter perfumes. Most often this:

Awesome.