HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU SMELL YOUR ONCESIGNATURE SCENT?

Scent is wrapped around memory more tightly than the low-rise jeans I wore in university. Science has confirmed that fact, but I live it every time I catch a whiff of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Classique. I used to spritz on the sweet, heady juice every time I went out in university—which is to say every night except Monday—so I’d recognize its notes of vanilla and orange blossom anywhere. And I often do, say, on a crowded train platform, at a bar while squeezing in to order a drink or while studiously watching the numbers tick up in an elevator. It’s said that a lingering smell from long ago can break open a powerful aching for your past, but Classique mostly just makes me want to puke. Its sexy blush-toned, bust-shaped bottle was like a signifier of the womanhood I had reached with my body but not my mind. The scent seemed like the epitome of refinement at a time in my life when I thought it was okay to describe something as “classy.” In fact, Jean Paul Gaultier’s iconic fragrance has the intoxicating attributes that defined much of the early aughts: It was expensive and deliciously basic—before “basic” was a buzzword. It was a Juicy Couture track suit and a $5 latte before there was a Starbucks on every corner. While wearing that scent, I made so many stupid choices and had the kind of fun I can’t hope to have again—and just a hint of the aroma brings back years of screaming and dancing and crying and laughing that collect at the back of my throat in a ball so big I nearly gag. I smell it less and less often these days—another reminder that my past is slipping away. But most days, that’s okay. I don’t need that suggestive glass bust to help me pretend to be a woman anymore; I’ve become one.