You'll have to excuse me for writing about laundromats again, but goddamn it, the places are an orgy of horrors, and I must describe each of them in great detail. The shoddy, poorly-spelled signs, the ant colony building its new home on the windowsill, the bathroom with the fake wooden toilet seat. This place is a gold mine for a writer, and I'm not going to miss the opportunity.
Most famous authors have made some dull remark about how people are the key to any story. Well, you know what? I hate people, and I'd like to use laundromats as a counterargument against these claims that people are required for a good story. I'm a nighttime laundry man, so my local laundromat has been empty both times I've visited it. But the story is in the place itself, the ironic lack of cleanliness, the cheap television enclosed in a wooden box for security, the creepy "kids corner" that consists of two broken speak-and-spells and a filthy teddy bear.
People are not the key anymore. They stopped being the key when Jerry Springer started parading white trash opies on stage threatening to hit each other with their "knuckle dusters". Poor people aren't interesting anymore. Not unless they're hermaphrodites who are cheating on their lovers by way of incest.
But let's get back to the laundromat, back to the action. I bought a laundry bag today, to replace my laundry basket. If I'm going to lug my dirty clothes two blocks down the street, I'm going to do it in style, with a bag slung over my shoulder and a strut in my step. As it turns out, a bag of laundry seems to be twice as difficult to carry as a balanced basket. If I were to sling the laundry bag over my shoulder, I would break my arm right off. The only "strut" in my step is the pathetic lurch I have when dragging that goddamn thing along the ground.
But I prefer looking like a caveman dragging a bag than a housewife prancing with a plastic basket, so I'm keeping it.
Once the clothes are put in the washer, it's time for me to explore this off-yellow wasteland. It's the best part of my week. Every time I visit this humid, uncomfortable place, I find something that creeps me out in a different way. Last week I noticed that there's a locked door in the back, with a sign addressed specifically to thieves. I am not a thief or a crook, but I could be if you got me drunk enough, so I figured I'd better read it just in case. Note: The spelling mistakes you see are on the actual sign, and are not just a mistake of my own.
ATTENTION THEIVES:
THIS IS THE ELECTRIC BOX ROOM.
1- There is nothing of interest here.
2- Money is removed dally, DONT BE STUPID!!!!
3- There is nothhing of value here.
4- Your picture has already been taken by the security camera.
The only "security camera" in the laundromat is a $12 webcam. I know this because I have the same webcam. It came for free when I signed up for high-speed internet service. So I know for a fact that the cord on this camera reaches about three feet. I doubt the thing is even turned on, and if it is, it's unlikely the type of scumbag who owns a laundromat would have enough money and computer literacy to create a system where the webcam footage is recorded.
Should I chance it? I don't give a shit about the electric box room or all the free quarters I can stuff down my pants, but I'm tempted by fate to cut the webcam cord with a pair of scissors just to see if some balding fat slumlord bursts through the door and accosts me. My only defense would be to claim that the misspellings on the thievery sign confused me.
When the man called the police, I'd use the few moments of free time to laugh at the man for installing a faux wood toilet seat, and for encouraging people to let their kids play with the diseased stuffed animal in the dirtiest corner of the room. And for designating that dirtiest corner as the "kids corner" in the first place. Then, just as police were walking in, ready to arrest me for "inappropriate scissor usage", or some such bastardized charge, I would make a sarcastic comment about the plastic 1970s airport chairs where us poor people were made to sit.
Why not? I should try it. I'm white trash enough as it is, so I might as well get a police record and complete the stereotype. I'm poor, my socks all have holes in them (every pair, for God's sake!), and I use "Ultra Bright" toothpaste because a huge tube of it only costs $1.85. In my defense, it isn't bad toothpaste, other than the fact that it tastes horrible and causes mouth cancer in lab rats.
Perhaps I'll just forget the whole thing, denounce my lifestyle, and become a good little upstanding citizen. I'll find a "nice girl" (meaning the first one attainable with no effort), settle down behind a white picket fence in the suburbs, and cover my eye rolling with the newspaper while the wife describes how "oranges were on sale today" at the local supermarket. I imagine the suicide rate in such a lifestyle is high, but if it gets you away from laundromats, then it's probably worth every horrifying moment of it.
