It is awful. Apparently I have turned some kind of corner. Straight into hell.

Twoscore and a bit years brings you around to this particular horror. When women scarce glance your way and when they do you cannot but note the horror on their faces. And if it is not horror, it is either pity or disgust. A look of censure descends upon them. Their jawline tightens. The head is lowered. They wish me to stop soiling their view and scrub me out in disapproval.

It happened just yesterday. An acquaintance I met some time back. Not a close friend. Just someone I knew before I got myself into my present particular cesspool. She was amiable enough then. Yesterday she hardly looked at me. Her smiling face smiled not at me. Her beaming countenance disappeared behind a lowered head everytime she faced me ( it can be argued whether she looked at me at all). It was weird and heartbreaking.

What a victim I am!

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held..