A lot of the guys at the bar have ex-wives -- go figure -- and they pretty much can see their own ex-wife being mad enough to do that kind of shit.

There was an overweight guy with bad hair who used to come to the bar regularly. I realize overweight and bad hair doesn't narrow things down too much, but I need to retain plausibly deniability. So: there was an overweight guy with bad hair who used to come to the bar regularly. 

He would occasionally talk to the regulars -- about sports, mostly -- but he pretty much kept to himself. Read a book. Seemed like spy novels, mostly. Oh yeah: acne scars.

Then the rumor went round. He was, evidently, a child molester. Just because people frequent bars doesn't mean they don't dislike child molesters as much as everyone else. If that is what you were thinking. Probably not what you were thinking, I don't know.

So: child molester. Details vary, as the details in rumors often do. One kid, several kids. Various ages of the children given. A lot of people believed he sodomized the children: maybe that is why I pointed out the acne scars.

He talked to one guy at the bar he was closest to, although not really that close. The child molester thing was a charge his ex-wife made when they were in the midst of their divorce. He said she was cheating on him, so threw back an accusation to make him seem like he was the bad guy.

This story got around, too. A lot of the guys at the bar have ex-wives -- go figure -- and they pretty much can see their own ex-wife being mad enough to do that kind of shit. But the rumors still went around. Being accused of being a child molester: it is like getting sprayed by a skunk in which you can never get rid of the scent. Whether it is true or not.

I don't know if it was true or not. If I had to guess, I would say it wasn't true. He didn't seem like that kind of guy. But them most of them probably don't seem like that kind of guy. Which is the problem, really.


-james james

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