i was like: lovers are waterproof

Spent much of the day at the laundromat, back in Oroville.

Something was messed up with my left ear. Clogged, very quiet.

A blue, suspicious towel hung on the doorknob in the public restroom.

I read Roy Kesey's Nothing in the World. It fit the mood of my bad ear. It made me want to wash my heart in a storm drain. And stare at any cute, depressed-looking gutterpunk girls like the history of a desert. Until they shivered or gave themselves a little hug.

Someone in the laundromat laughed and said, "That's what she said. She said that's the thing about death. You got to die or you don't!"

They had King of the Hill up on the television.

A couple argued over two choices: happy hour at the casino, or an unspecified something else. He yanked the clothes out of the dryer and was all, "These are all the baby's shit. We wash any of our stuff?" His ladyfriend waved a washcloth in his face.

This crinkled lady in a belly shirt and big glasses tossed clothes into the dryer like it was some sort of ballet. But then she saw me looking and stopped.

A man asked me if cotton were the highest temperature. He owned a beard half pirate, half vagrant, and sat on an overturned clothes basket in a bare chest, waiting. When his dryer stopped, he was able to cover his well-tanned veins with a guayabera shirt.

A woman, who sounded very spent, like an alley full of cigarette butts and tinfoil, chewed somebody out over the phone. She talked about how her husband needs heart surgery and how that put her under a lot of stress.

The sunset reminded me of persimmons. It colored the bricks of a store that used to sell some sort of Chinese coconut candy. Now they appear to sell shoes. Full of sexy. Sexy shoes.

It was an eventful laundromat.