Laundry Pimp

Posted by Single Steve | 9 comments

I’m a grown up, it’s true, and part of being a grown up is doing your own laundry. I have the misfortune of not having a washer and dryer in my place, so I have to go down to the laundry mat about a block away and fight with the rest of the locals for a working washer and dryer. This place looks like it was the latest and greatest technology that washing clothes had to offer, in 1976. This place sucks. Big time. Nothing ever works, it smells like hobo urine, and there’s an 80 percent chance the flickering light in the corner will cause you to have an epileptic seizure. But, I can deal with those things. The MOST concerning thing about this laundry mat, is the Shady Mcshady-ington characters it attracts.

Maybe this is just my laundry mat fantasy, but let know if you’ve dreamt of something similar:
You take a friendly stroll down to the local laundry mat, you walk in with your bag of dirty clothes, set your clothes down and start loading clothes into your machine. In walks an attractive looking girl, she sets her bag of lingerie and underwear down at the machine across from you, your eyes meet from across the spin dry dials, you open your mouth with some clever joke about washing machines, she laughs cutely and it’s love from there.

I mean who doesn’t want to meet a pretty girl while doing laundry?

In reality, I walk into the dank Laundry mat, have to jump over the sleeping homeless man in the doorway, then continue to try every washing machine until I find one that works. I’ve only seen 45 year old plus males in there, and it never looks like they’re even doing laundry. It’s like they’re just they’re hanging out, ready to steal my clothes the moment I walk out. My routine is, come in, put my clothes in a working washing machine, walk back to my house, come back 32 minutes later to put my washed clothes in the dryers, walk back to my house, come back 36 minutes to pick up my dry clothes.

This method reduces my chances of making eye contact with the bums sleeping on the counters, though it increases my odds of my clothes being stolen by them. Catch 22, but worth it.

About two weeks ago, the strangest thing happened. Sometime between my escape of dropping off my clothes and 32 minutes later of returning to throw them into the dryer, an attractive normal looking female about my age showed up and was doing laundry. She was wearing an SDSU shirt, indicating she was either in college, or knew what college was. Either way she didn’t look homeless and didn’t look like she wanted to steal my clothes. I think she’s the one. Me, kind of shocked of the situation, did what I do best when it comes to girls: be overly awkward. Instead of making eye contact and greeting her with a smile, I stared at my knees and did that thing where you walk real stiff and quick like your power walking. Not sure why I actually go into this mode, but it’s kind of a panic mode. Like I think she’s going to be impressed with my ability stiffly smash my clothes into a dryer with my eyes locked on staring at my knees. Right? After the initial shock of a girl being in the laundry mat, I regained composure and got a hold of myself. I finished putting my clothes into the dryer and had a burst of confidence. Today is the day. Today is the day I meet a girl outside of work. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends, I have the best group of friends a “grown up” could ask for, but for the most part they are all co-workers. Which is fine, but I’ve heard myths about meeting people outside your social circle of co-workers, I thought this could be one of those times.
So Instead of doing my usually dump and run, I decided to take a seat and wait out the next 36 minutes of the dry cycle to see if I could meet this girl. Not really sure what my game plan was, since it’s not really my style to just start talking to girl I don’t know, at a bar or laundry mat.
So I sat down, and started to formulate a plan. This is when I realized I had nothing to do for next 36 minutes except stare off into space. I didn’t plan on staying so I didn’t bring anything to “do”. FUCK. And it turns out attempting to just sit there and act “cool” actually makes you look like your just as creepy as the homeless guy sleeping at her feet. It’s like when you get into an elevator with people you don’t know and it’s that super awkward silence as you all stare at the numbers as the elevator, that blank stare at the numbers like you actually care what floor the elevators on. Yeah, that look. So I’m doing “that look” at this sign that says “No Refunds”, so at this point she either thinks I read at a 2^nd grade level because I’ve been staring at this sign for several minutes with only two words or I can’t read at all. Either way, I’m on her radar!

As I’m staring at the “No Refunds” sign, I start going over various scenarios in my head. Scenarios of how the conversation will start, how I jump in with some witty and hilarious comment, and then how we ride off into the sunset on white stallions.
I’m a great conversationalist (I think?), love making people laugh and yada yada, but I’m TERRIBLE at the initial “Hi, my name is Steven I’m not a creep and I would like to talk to you” line.

At some point during one of my dream sequences, she looks up over her book and we make eye contact. She smiles, opens her mouth and says “Hi”.

THIS WAS IT. My IN, she wasn’t completely creeped out by inability to read laundry signs, she said hello to ME. After all the scenarios had run through my head I knew exactly what to say, this was my time to shine, be funny, witty and interested.

I took a swallow of air, took a deep breathe, opened my mouth, and out came something that sounds like a Chewbacca war cry. FUUUUUUCK. Really!? I think I tried to say hello, but then I think I also tried to say 6 words at once, it just came out as an awkward yell.
She politely and soft spokenly said “what?”, I wonder if this was a “what? What did you say? I didn’t hear you attractive sir” what or if it was a “what??? Why the fuck did you just bark at me!?” what. 

I somehow managed to squeeze out a hello, after my Chewbacca cry, but it seemed like the room started to spin and heat up to at least 124 degrees. I figured that was my cue to leave and head home for the remaining 26 minutes to wait for my clothes to dry.

I returned 26 minutes later, did that whole stiff as a board staring at my knees technique to unload my clothes, did the eye brow raise to my new laundry mat friend and headed home.

Yep true story. I’m a lady killer, watch out.