In 1976 and 1977, the scents of Charlie perfume and Right Guard deodorant collided in my high school.  All the cool girls wore Charlie, and everyone used Right Guard.  The May that I was due to graduate was hot, and the school wasn’t air-conditioned. Imagine hundreds of puberty-ridden teens filling stuffy hallways.  The scent was overwhelming and accompanied by the slamming of metal locker doors.

Built in 1916, the school was massive and architecturally interesting.  It still stands and is used for a variety of things, but in the late ’70s, it swarmed with students. I was one of them.  There were more than four hundred in my graduating class. 

The basement opened into an outdoor area called the arch.  It was cool and dim and packed with teenage smokers.  The arch smelled of burnt tobacco, as well as Charlie perfume and failed Right Guard.  Sometimes you could catch a whiff of pot.  We stood there during lunch, smoking and talking.  I mostly listened.  I was still considered the new kid, and nobody knew me.  Nobody tried to know me.

I had an advanced biology class in one of the coolest rooms, although it was on the third floor.  The biology lab was furnished in 1930s-era lab tables, and the teacher, Mr. Berry, was a legend.  We were dissecting fetal pigs, and the room reeked of formaldehyde as well as Charlie perfume and Right Guard.  Sometimes I would sit in there at lunchtime with other students and work on my pig. 

It was tedious work, though interesting, and I was always behind.  I remember Susan with a cheese sandwich in her left hand and the scalpel in her right – concentrating on the abdominal organs.  Susan and I had many classes together.  She was kind of a friend, but we both were very studious, and we never called each other or hung out.  Acquaintance is a better word. 

In chemistry class, one of the hottest rooms, the smell of sulfur could knock you out.  I aced high school chemistry, but I never really understood it or had patience with it.  My freshman semester of chemistry in college was one of the primary reasons I dropped out in 1978. Mr. Dempsey taught me two years of high school chemistry, and I even tutored a friend, but my college instructor was an asshole.  Most of the large class failed it. 

My high school gym class was in the basement and had a myriad of smells, but class always ended with the reapplication of Charlie perfume and Right Guard.

I didn’t wear Charlie perfume, which might explain why I didn’t fit it.   I didn’t much like it.  I wore Wind Song until I came to my senses and started wearing White Shoulders in my early 20s.  It is still the only perfume I wear. 

The smell of Wind Song summons my teenage bedroom.  I had the entire third floor of a Southside brick house.  Formerly an attic, it had been converted into the perfect place for teenagers.  I would stand in front of the tiny gable windows and watch traffic on 13^th Avenue, wondering where everyone was going. 

But each morning, I dutifully dressed after applying Right Guard and Wind Song.  I smeared sticky Merle Norman lip gloss on my mouth and descended the stairs.  I would head off to another lonely day of high school that reeked of a perfume I didn’t like and Right Guard-scented body odor. 

They were miserable years.