Malcontented in Frogtown

Good writers eavesdrop. That's why Markie Post, aka Candice Dyer, is one of the best:

I was just exposed to one of the most obnoxious conversations I've ever been forced -- by dint of shrill, nasal voices -- to overhear. I was at a restaurant in Clarkesville. One table consisted of a Florida couple looking for mountain real estate; the other gave elbow room to some hyper-manicured, tanning bed-cured, bejeweled female Gainesville Realtors with homes on Lake Lanier. A toxic cocktail waiting to happen.

(First I want to know: when will the gay hairdresser of these Realtor women get the balls to inform them that the layered, feathered, poufy look -- in a carapace of Final Net hairspray -- has not been in vogue since circa 1982? But I'm being catty.)

Anyway, the Realtor table hooted and talked loudly about Nancy Schaefer, who would gleefully have all gays, people with melanin, and opinionated women (herself excluded, of course) shot on sight. Then they proceeded to advise this Florida couple to buy real estate in Gainesville only. "It's the best place on Earth!" one of them crooned. "There is everything you could ever want there!"

Then the other added, "If you buy in one of the other counties -- White, Lumpkin, or Habersham -- well... there are a lot of (at this, her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, as if she were about to say "negroes" or "cancer") REDNECKS in those places."

"Yeah, like you're a Noel Coward play, lady," I was about to chime in, thinking that money is wasted on the tasteless wealthy.

I thought I'd find an ally in my pock-marked, gay waiter, but he was too focused on his tip to pay me any attention when I told him the Realtor table was being too loud.

I figured it was karma for me. Many is the time that such people have cleared out when I've talked effusively about oral sex from a harelip. Payback is hell.

EDITORS NOTE: Having spent my high school years in Gainesville, I can attest that the "Poultry Capital of the World" is far from being the best place on Earth, unless you're fond of smelling processed chicken.