I write a lot for EZines and websites, places that require you to write a little "resource box" at the end of each article that offers your name, perhaps a website listing, and some clever commentary on yourself or why you wrote the article. For a long time, I always wrote in that blank, somewhere after the Joanna McLaughlin is a fragrance writer and frequent contributor to some-or-other website, Her favorite scent today is....

I always wrote something different, generally what I was wearing that day but occasionally what I wished I was wearing. It was notoriously different, and I realized after a bit that it presented the opinion that I was perhaps some kind of perfume slut who wore things indiscriminately.

I mean what kind of woman wears Youth Dew one day and Juicy Couture the next? Furthermore, it created, in my own mind at least, the notion that I had no real fragrance compass, you know, that internal sense of right and wrong in terms of what smells worked best for you.

A lot of people in the fragrance and fashion world have very decided and narrow opinions. At the risk of name dropping, I was once corresponding (OK, it was emailing) with Lauren Hutton's assistant at her business and I asked the assistant if Lauren Hutton intended on ever offering a fragrance and also, what sort of fragrances she preferred. A long electronic conversation ensued and I learned that Lauren Hutton liked fresh scents.

Now here is what is weird. I like fresh scents, too, I own a bunch, wear them, and from time to time they've appeared in my Joanna's favorite scent today is... resource box. But I'd never dare utter words as confining as, "I like fresh scents." To me, it sounds like I'm ruling out Orientals and greens and florals and old-fashioned retro stuff and what, oh what, on earth about the aldehydes?

You see, I don't want to be disloyal to the many fragrances who have become my allies in my quest to go through life scented. I fear that if I say I like fresh scents, then I will favor the fresh scents, and I don't want to favor one scent over another.

But why? Most women favor certain scents. But to me, it seemed like disloyalty. It's all well and good to think that floral scents are passe and girly-girly-frou-frou until the day comes when you just need a double shot of roses.

I find myself unable to commit to any fragrance. I will admit that some scents come up in the rotation more often than not and that my rotation is not anything scientific but more like a pursuit of olfactory experimentation. But I come back to certain favorite ones, but I'll never call them favorites.

I guess it's like the person who cannot commit to a relationship. I once knew a perfurmista who was looking for her signature scent because she wanted one perfume that she would wear for the rest of her life. The idea frightened me. Even wearing the same perfume all week seemed ridiculous. Why limit yourself when the world was full of great scents and more were added to websites and perfume counters and catalogs every single day?

The same quality that makes for a lousy boyfriend makes for a very good perfume wearer. You see, being an indiscriminate, non-committal perfume type, I've tried lots of perfumes. I've discovered that, for me, there are not that many really bad perfumes; even perfumes I do not like initially or find strange can be exactly right for an unusual day or an offbeat mood. My sniffing around has given me a broad base of knowledge about perfumes, too.

I wondered, however, how I could withhold my loyalty. I have heard people defend this or that perfume or commit stringently to one scent forevermore, and I suppose the noses and manufacturers like people like that, like them better than me. I'm the kind of customer who will buy from them, but I also buy from their competitors, and I don't often by the same perfume twice because, well, when you own a hundred plus bottles of perfume, why on earth do you need more of the same thing?

But loyalty and commitment are qualities best reserved for humans. Friends should be loyal; lovers should commit. Even in business or social things, people should be loyal and dependable. I'm actually one of those kind of people. I value those traits and do things, sometimes, that are not in my own best interest but because I'd said I'd do them or because somebody is counting on me.

Maybe that's the joy in playing the field when it comes to perfume. You don't have to dance with the guy who brought you or wear the perfume you wore yesterday.

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