La Loco Laundry

Classes are finally over and I’ve been grading finals and trying to catch up on all the things I’ve put on the back burner — hell, more like an unplugged crock pot — for the past month.  Like laundry.  When I find myself spritzing my jeans with Febreze, it’s time to suds the duds.  But, Innernetz, I really, really hate going to the laundromat. I’d rather take a kindergarten class on a field trip to the DMV after giving them jellybeans and espresso for breakfast. 

Things were getting desperate, however.  Besides the Febreze, I was also down to wearing Mr. Dingo’s boxer briefs while using band-aids to hold them up.  So off I went to the laundromat thinking that it couldn’t be as bad as I was expecting.  Hahahahaha!  Oh come on, Innernetz!  You know me by now.  Of course it could!

There were two empty machines in the back of the laundromat. I dumped my clothes onto a table and began sorting when a shadow emerged from the corner.  It was Yoda’s evil twin.  Short, swarthy, and with his face wrinkled like a two-pack-a-day Shar-pei , his sudden presence at my elbow startled me.

“Drop something you did?” he croaked as he timidly handed me my bra.  At least I think that’s what he said.  His garbled words oozed past broken yellowed teeth that tap-danced like drunken tombstones in his puckered mouth.

“Thank you,” I said, noticing a wet thumbprint on my C-cup.  He glided backward into the shadows as eerily as he had appeared.  I held my bra away from my body in case the disgusting propagated.

I had just started a load and settled into a chair to mock my students’ papers when I felt a bony finger tap me on the shoulder. I looked up expecting to see Pervy Yoda but no, it was Bod-a-lish-us.  Bod-a-lish-us was wearing an ultrasheer body stocking and fuck me stilettos.  Let me say that slowly: Body.  Stocking.  She woke up that morning, cracked open a plastic egg she’d been saving since 1989 when she was thirty pounds lighter, and, with the aid of a crowbar and shoehorn, strong-armed the sheer burnt orange “suntan” abomination over her calves, thighs, and hips until she reached her armpits.  Then, the body stocking depriving her brain of any oxygen, she looked in the mirror and declared herself flabulous.  She looked like a radioactive hotdog.  And she brought her own buns.  Bubbly, puffy, crusty buns.

Bod-a-lish-us waved a container of laundry detergent in front of my face and asked, “Me use?”

“Sorry,” I said shaking my headwhile prying my container of detergent from her purple three-inch acrylic nails. 

Tears brimmed at the edges of her heavily kohled eyes.  “Me use?” she repeated pointing to a laundry cart with a small load of hoochie-mama accoutrements.  Damn, I thought, if I don’t let her use my detergent, what is she going to wear to work tonight?  Besides, the body stocking was obviously her laundry-day outfit.  Letting her wash the rest of her whoredrobe would be like a public service. 

Sighing, I said, “Okay, but please use just a li—”

“Gracias!” she said.  Her tears dried up like a sunbathing raisin contemplating its deferred dreams.  And then waving her talons, she summoned three kids who entered the laundromat rolling one of those SUV-sized granny carts.  And there went my laundry detergent. The Bod-a-lish-us brood opened and slammed washing machine doors and swung from them like low-hanging crotchfruit.

I had just taken my seat and opened my gradebook when I was again disturbed by a poke at my shoulder.  It was Pervy Yoda handing me another of my bras. 

“Drop something you did?” he said, giving me the side eye.

This was just too creepy. 

“Get away from me, you fucking freak!” I screamed.  Inside my head.  I searched for the manager.  I found her watching a telenovella in a little room at the far end of the laundromat as she reverently stroked the coin-changer strapped to her belt.

“There’s a guy back there stealing underwear,” I said. 

She sighed and, without taking her eyes off the screen, yelled something unintelligible over the din of the TV.  I smugly waited for Pervy Yoda to levitate to the front of the store.  He would’ve gotten to us sooner but for the disruption in the force as three Bod-a-lish-us muffpuppets cried out in glee and raced through the laundromat on laundry carts slamming into washing machines.

When he finally reached us, Pervy Yoda and the manager shouted back and forth at each other in tongues until the commercial break was over.  The manager threw her hands up in the air, tossed a few words over her shoulder punctuated by an occasional “Ayiii!” and then went back to her show.  Pervy Yoda slunk back to his hole.

“That’s it?” I asked.  “Aren’t you going to kick him out?”

“No miss.  No worry.”

“But he is stealing underwear!”

“He stop, miss,” she said. “He here with one of his children and their mother,” she explained, pointing toward the Bod-a-lish-us brood.

Fuck this, I thought.  I stormed back to my washing machines, took out the wet clothes, and left.  I’d buy a bucket and scrubbing board before ever going back there.  Once home, I stomped to the bathroom.  And then I opened my laundry bag to hang up my wet… dental floss thong, fishnet thigh highs, and cupless bra.

These weren’t clothes.  These were pieces of fabric held together by fairy dust and surface tension.  In addition to my own clothing, I had stolen Bod-a-lish-us’s undies.

Leave a comment....