8:06 a.m. - 2001-10-31
laundry
I went down to the laundromat on Macadden last week, not to cop dope or panhandle like everyone else, but to wash my clothes. The management of my apt. complex has provided four machines for my laundering convenience, but they're viscously monopolized by these two fat Mexican ladies (who must be running some kinda business out there, because two families alone could not...hell our whole building could not generate that much laundry). Anyway, I usually end up rolling down to Macadden 'cause it's close and it's never crowded. Possible reasons it's never crowded? Maybe it's that the machines don't "clean" your clothes, in the classic sense. You see, the lack of a regular on-site attendant has made this the laundromat of choice for Hollywood's homeless community. So the oily ghosts of their street-grimy, dumpster-juicy, and stained-by-stuff-about-which-I-don't-even-want-to-thinky washloads haunt every machine (this would explain the progressive dinge-ification of my own clothes since I started patronizing the joint). Or maybe it's the fact that many of these homeless types feel compelled, for financial reasons, to wash every outfit they own on every (rare) trip to the laundromat, and the sight of a 250 lb. 'vagabundo' sipping from a paper bag, reading last week's funny papers in his briefs while he waits for his trousers to dry, is more than some customers bargain for. I dunno. And there is this whole sociological sub-ecology that flourishes whenever multiple strains of itinerant vice-seeker operate in the vicinity of the same public toilet, and that can get pretty unsavory. But that might be one of the reasons I go there...even though the suburban "Gee whiz this is just like a Bukowski story" voyeurism of my youth has passed, it's been replaced by an urban "When exactly did my whole life turn into a goddamn Bukowski story?" kind of empathetic appreciation of the less stable members of my community. And anyway, even though my clothes come out sort of dingy, they do smell like soap. And that's always an improvement...it must have something to do with spending most of my sweaty workday covered in sawdust, but my dirty clothes kinda get this like, hamster-cage funk about 'em. (Although it could have something to do with all those alfalfa smoothies down at Robix, or my tendency to sleep and defecate on the same side of the cage). So, you top off the (beer) sweaty sawdust with a layer of second-hand smoke, and that's me. It's like, if you kept a dirty hamster out at a bar all night and then sniffed him after he passed out, that would be it. That's the flavor of my funk. But what can I say - the ladies seem to dig it.
Ok not really.
So...I'm walking into the laundromat last week and I see somebody in a short pink skirt leading someone else by the hand into the pay toilet and I thought "someone's gonna turn a trick in the toilet". Then I thought "yikes!" 'cause I've been in that toilet (although not with this particular hooker ) and it ain't exactly "romantic". But whatever, they could have just been smoking rock...I didn't get a good look at them as they walked in and really, it was none of my business. So I throw a few coins in the ol' dinge-a-matic and sit down on this bench with my notebook and try and finish this song I was working on. There's no one else in the joint. 15 minutes later our lavatory co-conspirators are still at "it" as this black fellow, about 6', 230lbs. w/a shaved head and a piratical hoop-earring walks in. He bangs a few times on the bathroom door.
"Just a minute..."
"I was just checkin' to see if you was cool"
"Yeah. I'm cool."
So this gentleman (who, although innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, shall be henceforth referred to as "pimp") sits down next to me and chills out for 5 minutes, at which time a young (and strikingly beautiful) black girl in the aforementioned pink skirt and a dazed, mid-forties looking Korean guy (who I believe owns the "99 cent Store" across the street) emerge from the shitter. Having concluded, I assume, whatever secretive transaction had transpired within. Brief words were exchanged between pimp and the Korean, and while they're talking the girl cruises over and checks out my little notebook. Kinda forward y'know, like bad girls get when they're all dressed up and aware of their own hotness...or like, when they're aware of the fact that their pimp can smash you into paste. She claimed to be a "rapper", and I just nodded and played it cool. So the Korean splits and I go check my wash and she cruises over to the sorting table to talk to pimp. Five minutes later, I'm leaning on my machine when someone yells "Hey, hey yo...". I look over.
The girl's about five machines down the aisle with her back(side) to me. Her legs are just beyond shoulder-width apart and she's bent forward, holding her left ankle with her left hand...leaving her right hand free to hike her skirt well up over her (amazing, amazing) ass. And (as is so often the case on laundry day) she is sans underwear. Her grinning, upside-down visage regards me from between her own legs; "You like that?"
Maybe she mistook my stunned silence for indecision and felt the need to restate her case, I dunno. But for whatever reason, and utilizing the middle and index fingers of her right hand as a sort of makeshift speculum, she proceeded to display for me a more complete gynecological profile than I'd ever witnessed in ANY laundromat, ever.
"Huh, you like that?"
She started shifting her weight back and forth between feet to kinda drive her point home. I felt one of my knees about to give out. "Um, sure"
For some reason she thought this was hilarious, as did pimp, who'd been hanging just outside the doorway looking bemused throughout the peep-show and who now walked away chuckling. I turned back to my notebook...but whatever lyrical thread I'd been pursuing was lost. So I just chilled and smelled the soap and watched dust motes swirl in a dirty slant of scratchiti-filtered laundromat sun.
She went back to the sorting table and proceeded to unload her clothes from the dryer.
