Crazy Is As Crazy Does

Older man, white hair, about 6 feet tall. Caucasian. No visible tattoos. Completely and totally nondescript.

I avoid eye-contact and make mental notes. He's wearing khakis and white tennis shoes. He is wearing a long sleeved white shirt under a thread-bare T-shirt that was once white at some point in the past. Now it looks like it may have taken its turn washing the car once or twice. It also has little rectangular shapes razored out in odd places along seems. I can't imagine why but it screams of craziness.

He's also handwritten a message on the front of the shirt. And not very neatly. Scrawled in black Sharpee ink is something about being President of Outreach blah blah blah - can't read the rest as it is disheveled and clinging oddly to the undershirt with sweat. Just as we'll. I don't want him thinking I am admiring his physique.

He repeats the question about a man in my life. He's not about to let me dodge it.

I want to rant about needing a man to take care of me like a giraffe needs a wetsuit, but I think better of it. This is a man whose buttons I need not push.

"I have a wonderful man in my life. We're all very happy together." 

"But you're not married."

I am not sure why he'd ask, but I struggle with how to answer without offending his obviously tightly-wound sensibilities. He could be one of those kooks who thinks he's doing the world a favor by eliminating bad people from the population. Hookers. Drug dealers. Gays. Democrats. Women who thumb their noses at the sacred institution of marriage.

I want to say it is none of his GD business.
I want to say I'd sooner set myself on fire than marry anyone again.
I want to say I won't get married simply to avoid the trouble of having to divorce or murder the next spouse.
I want to say my marriage was the worst mistake, the biggest travesty, the most colossal disaster in recorded history and I cringe at the slightest memory.

But I don't. I simply say, "Not yet." 

That answer is apparently satisfactory enough to allow him to change subjects.

"Why are you here? Do you work?

As if it weren't humiliating enough to actually not be working, now I have perfect strangers asking about it.

I glance up the hill. The three baseball-talking gents are about a half mike away and coming in my direction. I need to send an SOS.