and put most of them in the laundry hamper, then put that in the granny cart, then took a pillow case and threw the rest of the dirty clothes in, and rolled the whole thing behind me down the filthy streets of hollywood on a warm sunday afternoon.
warm if you didnt have a cold.
like i did.
so i had on cords, a thermal shirt, a flannel, and karisa’s grey sweatshirt, and a cubs hat, and a frown.
passed an old man kicking a can as he walked down the street, except he wasnt kicking a can, he was kicking a pacifier.
passed a dog in a small yard, a yard that smelled of dog doo and i wondered if that particular dog’s heightened sense of smell was haunting him. my sense of smell was fuct due to the cold, yet the doo cut right through.
passed four men playing poker on a fold out card table in someones front lawn. they were old men and they spoke armenian to each other and smoked cigarrettes and drank wine from water glasses beneath the shade of a cherry tree.
made it to the coin laundry. had everything with me except cough drops and you.
my favorite row of washers were ready for me. got colors in the first one, got colors in the second one. two mexicans showed up a little younger than me. one had a good little moustashe going. the other did just as he was told. he was told to put clothes in the fifth machine. hey pedro, what if i wanted to use the fifth machine i esped.
put whites in the third. put colors in the fourth. stuffed the rest of the clothes in the first and second and wished for the ins to arrive.
no such luck.
some high school girl with big juicy tits, her little sister in one hand, and nathanial hawthornes the scarlet letter in the other hand sat down next to me. i look up to see whats on tv. some spanish program. i look at the other tv and not only is that a spanish program too, but its the same one as over here.
i get up, ashamed that im undressing this high school sophomore with my eyes and walk past the winchells donut store and pass four men two whom are sitting on a parked car, two who are leaning against the store looking at every single woman who walks past, not discrimanatory against age, weight, or hair color.
theyre speaking spanish and they look at me pass and i look like a freak with all my layers but im sick and im xbi so dont fuck with me, amigos.
i poke my head into a girlie store where everything is red and pink and white for valentines day and everything is wrapped up in plastic like grandma just got a plastic wrapping machine and went crazy. even the dozen roses have plastic covering them.
grandma looks like a great-grandma and i aint got no valentine so i move on.
pass by an armenian record store. bunch of people ive never heard of, but the store has six cds of this guy, six of some lady, six of another guy. all in the window.
i dont even think the virgin megastore has six led zeppelin four cds and thats like the greatest cd of all time.
i move on to one of the many mini markets on this street. this one has a good meat department, a lousy vegetable department, and lots of minute made orange juice and apple juice so they have made a sale here.
buck thirty nine for tweny ounces of oj? sure its a rip off, but what the hell.
rappers delight is playing on his radio, still sounding as good as it did when i first heard it back in the day.
sometimes it pays to be as old as the hills.
get back to the coin laundry and theres only a few minutes left on machine #2 and then none. my favorite row of dryers are empty.
i put in a load, then el jag off puts in a load two over from me, leaving me with just three to use. i will definately need four.
when i get to the fourth i have to go clear across to the opposite end of the laundry mat.
i think about the fact that even though my dick hasnt been sucked properly in weeks, im still way ahead of the game than this guy, and let him have what he wants, which is to irritate me.
i sit down and watch a philipino woman with a tshirt of a racooon that says “no matter what happened, i didnt do it.”
he’s laying on his back, hands on his belly.
big titted high school girl’s sister is begging for change from her older sister. the little girl is maybe 4. her sister says she only has a dime. the little girl insists “change!”
she whines and whines and girls are nicer than boys would be. eventually they both exit and soon return with a sticker from a machine down the street and the little girl is happy again.
before i know it my laundry is done and racoon lady sees another lady taking my dryers as i take my clothes out, but insists on ruining her shit by taking the one last dryer near the door, fucking up everything, its hard to explain, but, at least more than one person was being selfish.
pass a man getting out of a market with a can of beer in a brown paper bag.
i thought about one of my highschool art teachers who taught me how to look at shadows and then draw them.
i wonder if i was todays shadow as i unlocked my backdoor, pulled the granny cart into the kitchen and powered on the tv which was about to show me the all star game.
he’s 59. im sick as a damn dog and ive been up all night watching an academy screener of Gangs of New York which i totally loved.