The perfume sits rather un-subtly on my nightstand. In thick black capital letters, its label reads, “Sexual Healing.” Nearly everyone who sees the fragrance—friends, dates, even the ConEd employee dispatched to set up my internet—whips out their phone to take a photo of the cheeky sentiment.

True, I have no idea what the late Marvin Gaye smelled like in person, as I was born 11 years after his untimely death. However, I believe the scent manages to encapsulate the aura of one of the greatest, horniest songs in history—in only 50 milliliters.

If you ask Ali Kashani, founder and creator of Art Meets Art, the label that released this fragrance by Christophe Raynaud, Sexual Healing smells like “a gourmand and spicy honey accord that melts with tobacco absolute and vanilla.”

If you ask me, it smells like the idealized suburban basement where America’s youth collectively took their first cigarette puff. …