So I'm in a local thrift store looking for a funnel...I head over to the cookware kitchen aisle, and I'm attacked by a friggin gale of crushed flowers, just enveloped by it. It is rather obviously coming off a minor giantess collecting dishware for projects unknown but imaginable. Not unpleasant smell just overmuch by about 20x. (Sometimes get this in the foyer of the PO, where one ill-doused woman can fumigate an entire anteroom.) So I'm looking for my funnel, I'm looking, I'm looking, and this other woman, normal sized but older, maybe 60, comes up to me and says something, "That is really pleasant (something) you're wearing...I bet you never heard that from a woman before."

"Not me, ma'am, I don't use that stuff." I'm respectful. It's not how I feel. It's usually how I act. That's not hypocrisy, that's ordinary social lubrication to keep things pleasant and functioning. On serious stuff I don't bend or veil.

I swear to god, I have to bite my lip daily in the Midwest. You just can't voice the things I always think here or you will be silently hated and subject to occult reproaches and official removement from the ranks of the Down to Earth, which passes for the elite in the Midwest. You're joined it at birth; you have to be elected out of it by your actions or more likely attitudes.

Now the real me, which is kept under wraps mostly except here, wants to look at her and say...

Ok ma'am. Here we have two subjects. One is a middle-aged man, skinny, somewhat angry looking, nothing particularly or essentially fruity about his clothes or general appearance; nothing about his demeanor screams or even whispers begonias - lot of them!. On the other hand, about a few feet away, we have an oversized woman looking for dishware and talking to others in the form of talking to herself. Now, which of these is likelier to take a bath in a perfume bottle? I'll give you all the time you need.

Honest to god, people are wackier than you would think.

1) this did not smell like cologne -- I mean, the faggiest fag would not wear something this floral. There was nothing masculine about this smell. Even after I denied it this woman was drawing up a little too near to detect it. WTF is wrong with people?

2) you only find men who do up the cologne who are about 70 and at some nightclub, not crawling around a thrift store at high noon.

In conclusion, the number of people who should not be breeding is not low. It is high.