Suddenly...

So it's 35 steps to the end of the street. 23 steps and a turn left to the bus stop. 
I closed my eyes and tried to sympathise with someone blind and it's not easy. I didn't last the first 20 steps, mainly due to the careless dog owners. So I stopped, opened my eyes and made my way over to the shelter to wait.

 

While I was walking - staring into space as one does - and heading down the narrow sidewalk to the bus stop.

 

A guy was walking up. A male, about 20, one of the Cape Verde immigrants in a black basketball shirt and shorts, bright bandanna round his head, new tennis shoes - the only thing I really noticed. He swung his body to either side as he walked... like most males with that kind of attitude that screams "Hell yeah bro, I'm cool". I don't know who he was, I couldn't tell you if I've ever seen him before and I wouldn't be able to tell you if I ever see him again. What I do know is that as I moved up closer against the wall to give him space to pass, he moved closer to me and said what I presume were obscenities in my ear. It's not an accent I understand well.
 
Hey Beautiful.
I'd do you.
I'd eat you.
I know just what you need.
 
You may know what I need, my lovelies.... but I won't be the first to tell you that you're not the ones to give it to me.
I swear it may be violent but I'm so disgusted by half of these pathetic losers that the only thing I want to do half the time is put a bullet through them. Okay, that's a tad extreme. I don't hate men. I hate desperate men. I had the sad pitiful states they walk around in. I hate the way sex and I won't even go that far; I hate the way contact - everyday innocent contact - can deprive these people of the most basic and fundamental emotional development, physical development.
A child is ignored in kindergarten.
He looks funny. He sounds funny. He wears glasses. He's short. He's shy.
This may or may not follow him throughout his life… but many times that's all that's needed.
Mother doesn't want her boy to get dirty… to run around or mix.
Whatever it may be… it always starts small. It always starts young.

 

It's not that these boys don't try. Of course they do – and I say boys because girls aren't the same in that aspect.
These boys try but for them it'll never be quite like all the other boys.

 

This is one possible side. This is the side of external rejection… the being overlooked.
Then they go through puberty and they start forgetting about monster trucks and lego [or whatever it is that little boys think about] and start focusing on the fact that they aren't like everyone else.

 

Now if my anger were a bit stronger I'd rant about how the idea sickens me… Focusing more on the guy who approached me today… I can't really write out how repulsed I felt by that one male today. It's one male today, it's five males when wolf whistling out of car windows – pickup trucks most of the time, feels like bloody Kansas – if I ever dare doll myself up a bit, and heaven forbid a skirt, a top when it's hotter…
Makeup becomes war paint and suddenly I'm an Amazon.