Fine. I'm the bitch.

I’ve been having some trouble lately with the local flora and fauna in my oh-so-progressive-East-Bay town.

First there was the incident of the Fu Manchu mask.

Then two weeks ago, while I was at my local and ever-so-sketchy coin laundry, I ran into “Chatty” again.

First, let me just tell you a little bit about this laundry… it’s in a very convenient location, only a few blocks from my house. And it’s large, well lit and has tons of parking. During the daytime on a weekday, it’s usually pretty empty. (Except for the pedestrians. (It’s located in the middle of a long block and people walk through the laundry to get from a main downtown street to a large parking lot on the other side.) And there’s a residence hotel on the upper floors of the building. Sometimes people congregate by the back door and smoke things that are not tobacco.

So, ok, I know this is starting to sound bad… but really, at noon on a Wednesday, it never used to be that bad. But recently, it seems like it’s become a favorite hangout for the homeless and the mentally ill. I guess it’s just a warm, well-lit place with vending machines and trash cans. It seems like almost every week now, there’s some disheveled looking person, pacing back and forth and muttering – trapped in some psychosis. I try not to let it bother me. Heck, I’m a crazy lady too right? I used to live with schizophrenics and people with anti-social personality disorder and whatnot. I feel like I generally know how to make myself look non-threatening to them. Then again, I know just how dangerous people can be in these states. (Usually not, only on rare occations.)

Anyway, back to Chatty. I’d seen her at the same time the previous week so I started to wonder if she and I were on the same schedule. I think Chatty is homeless (although she could just be rummaging around in the trash cans for fun…) but that’s beside the point. You could be the fucking QUEEN OF ENGLAND and I wouldn’t want to strike up a conversation with you at 9am on a Thursday morning in my local coin laundry! The previous week I’d managed to avoid exchanging more than a couple of words with her. But this time, I was not so lucky.

When I got up to transfer my clothes from the washing machines to the dryers, she went over to the table I’d been sitting at and started looking at my NY Times. On the page I’d turned to, there was an article about a local town, Woodside, CA.

“Do you know where Woodside is?” She asked me. “Is it near here?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s really close to Palo Alto.” I said, trying to look busy.

“Have you ever been there? It looks nice.”

“It is. Actually, I’m going down there as soon as I get finished here.”

“Well! Really!” She exclaimed. “Is it expensive there.”

“Yeah. It’s extremely expensive. I think it’s one of the most expensive towns in America actually.”

“Oh. Well. Too bad.” She said, sounding a bit… insulted? What the fuck, I thought. I’m not trying to be mean. It’s not like I can afford to live there either - I think the average home price is over a million dollars. But at that point, Chatty wandered off and left me alone. That wasn’t too bad, I thought. A few minutes later, another woman (I’m guessing also homeless) walked in and upon seeing Chatty, turned around and left. So it’s not just me, I reassured myself.

BUT THEN! Twenty minutes passed, I folded my laundry and turned to go out the door.

“Goodbye!” I heard her yell behind me. I didn’t turn around. How do I know she was talking to me, I reasoned. “GOODBYE!! Hey, Goodbye!” She yelled louder. I was out the door at this point but I heard a male voice say:

“Well that was fucking rude, wasn’t it?!”

“Yeah, I know.” Chatty said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with some people.”

Fine. It’s me. I’m the bitch.



Scene Two.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve avoided going to this laundry because I didn’t want to run into Chatty. I told my husband about it and now he’s encouraging me to go to another laundry. But. I hate going to new places. I like getting stuck in my little ruts. If I go to a new place, I don’t know what I’m going to find and I have to psych myself up just to walk in the door.

So, this afternoon I went back. I thought, maybe it’s a Saturday so it’ll be busier. There will be other people to distract the roving conversationalists. I was right. It was busier. But there were enough open washing machines for me to do all four loads at once. As I start putting my clothes in the washers, I hear this loud creepy voice behind me talking to nobody in particular. Must be another psychotic, I thought. I looked out of the corner of my eye and there was….

Piseth (see the comments section)

I recognized him right away. He sent me his resume last year and again this year. He’s an actor and since he’s the only person who’s ever included his headshots with a resume (for a tutoring job?) – I remembered his name. Piseth. When first saw his pictures last year, I remember thinking he was a pretty attractive man. Today however, Piseth had taken it upon himself to practice his lines. (He’s auditioning to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father?) Let’s just say these are some eerie lines and he was using his best “spooky” voice.

So since I recognized him, I broke my standard I-don’t-talk-to-strangers rule.

“You know, that’s kind of creepy.” I said. (I should’ve said “You know, that’s kind of creepy, Piseth!” But I wasn’t 100% sure it was him yet.)

“Doom’d for a certain time to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to lasting fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature…” Piseth continued.

“Ok. Fine. Don’t answer me.” So I went about my business, put my clothes in the wash and went back to my car to wait.

Twenty-five minutes later when I came back to put my clothes in the dryer, he was still there. Fuck, I thought. As I busied myself with the dryers, he continued his recitation. And then, when I got closer to him he started with this:

“And the Oscar for best actor goes to… Piseth, in ‘Hamlet!’ Oh, thank you, thank you! What an honor, I don’t know what to say… I remember back when I was a struggling actor in the Bay Area… I used to have to practice in a coin laundry… “ At this point he breaks down in fake sobs of joy. I just wanted to hit him as hard as I can. (Which admittedly, is not very hard) But I just finished putting my clothes in the dryers and walked back to my car.

Twenty more minutes passed and when I went back to get my clothes out of the dryer, he was still there. Double fuck. And now he was talking to this woman who had just rolled in on her bike. (Do me a favor, don’t ride your bike in the laundry lady!) And as I gathered up my clothes, I listened to her go on and on about how great an actor he was.

“Oh your voice was perfect! Where are you studying? Don’t you think a British accent is just so much better suited for Shakespeare? You really had a wonderful intensity…!” Oh my lord.

FINE. I’m the bitch. All of you people just go right on doing whatever the hell you please. Just do whatever you feel like doing in the middle of public. Don’t worry if it freaks the rest of us out or you seem like a complete wing-nut doing it. Free expression, that’s the ticket.

Those of us who maybe have more robust social filters or perhaps, grew up on the east coast – we’re the bad guys. It’s wrong to be considerate of other people’s boundaries. You’ve got it right. We’re uptight and I’m the bitch.

Bitch soap available at:
http://angelicdreamz.com/store/mabels_laundromat.html