I’ve seen her twice in as many weeks.

By her, I mean the most pitiful beggar in all of the ATL. She begins at the front of the train, moving through the “do not use” doors between cars. Upon opening each door, she loudly exclaims:

“Excuse me!”

She progresses through the car, using every pole and seat to support her sad stroll.

“I’m just trying to get some kind of change so I can get some kind of milk for my baby. I’ve been trying all day and I’m about three or four dollars short. Does anybody have some kind of change so I can get some kind of milk for my baby?”

I wasn’t even looking in her direction, but I knew it was her. I was looking at this nice middle-aged lady in her freshly-dry-cleaned Marshall’s suit eating a banana wrapped in tissue. The lady just about shot through the roof upon hearing the beggar’s interjection, placed her hand over her heart and explained to the rider next to her, “she scared me!” She began fanning her face with her hand.

But the way I knew that it was this particular beggar is a little gross. In fact, it’s really gross; I could smell her before I saw her. For this particular woman, as if she didn’t have enough problems, suffers from the horrid affliction of Cheese Folds.

The first time I was exposed to Cheese Folds, I had just moved to Atlanta and was working telephone technical support at an ISP. Part of my job included covering as the Receptionist for the Office Manager when he took his late afternoon booty-call lunch.

One day, while fulfilling my duties, I was trapped by our Technical Manager. I was sitting there, transferring calls to everybody’s voice mail (nobody but sales would ever take any calls), when I heard him wheeze, “do we have any FedEx envelopes?”

The reception area was contained by three barriers: a filing cabinet, a wall and a desk. The only escape was to my back, and when I turned around, there was our Technical Manager in all his 450 pounds, supporting himmself with one hand on the filing cabinet and the other on the desk. And all around me was the incredible, nauseating stench of Cheese Folds.

Cheese Folds is an affliction in certain morbidly obese folks in which some sort of fungus or mold or something accumulates deep within the folds of their fat and simmers, stews and stinks. I’ve got whiffs of it before: when I was a little kid and pulled something particularly nasty out from under a toenail, or this other time when somebody had a great dane puppy with rotten, stinky bandages on its recently cut ears. It’s a tangy, organic, funky smell that penetrates to the upper sinuses and lingers. On a nice French cheese, it might be desireable. On a human, it’s another story. Once you’ve smelled it, you never forget it.

So there I was in my reception desk jail hell, searching more frantically for something than I ever had before just to alleviate my misery. I couldn’t find any FedEx envelopes, so the Technical Manager wouldn’t leave. Finally, I told him that I thought I saw some back near his office to get him to leave, even though I hadn’t every even seen a FedEx envelope before, no did I even know what one was.

Which brings us to today, and how this particular, recurring, milk-seeking woman smelled so strongly of Cheese Folds that I could smell her before I even saw her. It’s so bad, that I had to hold my nose and decided to get off the train at King Memorial station and just taking the next one. Eyes were watering throughout the train car as the door shut and she began her stroll.

She was approaching in her particularly slow method, a look of desperation on her face. Her eyes had a thousand-yard stare to them, not focusing on anything and not making eye contact with anyone. The stench was getting worse and worse, and the train seemed a million miles from the station. I felt a tinge of panic—almost a total destruction of logical thought and a full triggering of my flee response. Such is the power of Cheese Folds. My mind become obsessed with the classic problem proposed by my eighth grade algebra teacher: if you cover half the distance between two points during each interval, you’ll never get there because half of something is always something.

But we did arrive at the station, and I jumped from the train, taking a deep breath of the fresh subway air when I heard it:

“Excuse me!”

I instantly jumped back onto the train, catching a glimpse of the woman strolling and milk-seeking along the platform as I squeezed through the closing doors. The train stank, but at least I was free.