A metaphor for sexual differences.

When I was in high school, we were required to have gym clothes. Once in a while I'd be stuck without mine for some good reason that I forget. This was not a huge problem because somewhere in the locker room were some unguarded gym clothes that I could change into and then leave where I found them. That was fine except I wasn't the only one doing that, and the clothes had an odor that would wilt flowers and curl nose hairs.

One day I was without my own clothes, and I discussed this with a female friend of mine who offered to let me wear hers. She warned me that she hadn't washed them in a long time, and I figured they couldn't be as bad as the rotten swamp of death smell I had as an alternative.

Her clothes stunk. The smell was as bad as my clothes ever got though not as bad as the locker room community shorts and shirt that smelled as if they'd been pulled from an old corpse. It was a refreshing stench nevertheless because it was a completely different overpowering reek from what I produced. This was a revelation. I hadn't expected that a girl could make clothes smell as bad as a boy could, but there it was watering my eyes in defiance.

This turns out to be what I think about differences between the sexes in general. Men make a foul odor distinct from the foul odor that women make, but they're both foul. They're different without being unequal.