Airing It

Gone are the days that I waste eight full hours doing several weeks worth of laundry in a public facility. I have forgotten the fear that is spawned from pondering just how unmentionable the unmentionables were in the washer's past. No clothes go AWOL mysteriously, and I don't have to suffer under the unflattering laundry room lighting. Yes, laundry facilities and the horrors within them are but a memory now, since my sister is an adult and has her own washer in the property we inhabit.

I was putting these machines to use today while I was home working. These days, I do my laundry every couple of weeks instead of once a month. The loads are small to medium, and I am convinced that my clothes are getting cleaner and I am not punishing them with long stints in the dryer. We all win here in the Hollywood Hills, where homes have private laundry rooms and the Mexicans are only around once a week to do the lawns.

Anyhoo, I was finishing off the last of it tonight. I saved my hoodie for last, since I like to wash it gently and by itself. Oh sure, laugh if you want, oh cynical one, but sometimes people care about material goods in their life, and this is my Rosebud. The hoodie is a jolly maroon color, and is emblazoned with my pimp name ("Devious Honey"). It is the one thing I would take with me to a desert island, as it is the source of all my feminine wiles.

I put the hoodie in the washer and added my oh-so-environmentally-safe detergent (that I don't think cleans anything, but instead gives it a nice patchouli and corn chip smell). Gently and with quiet reverence, I turned the knob to Delicate and tossed in my Downy Ball. I smiled at the "sploosh" noise and continued to stare dreamily into the washer.

My calm quickly turned to disgust. As my hoodie swirled around the washer, I noticed the water was turning a very unpleasant brown color.

'I just washed that damn thing,' I thought to myself as I grimaced and shielded my eyes from the darkening water. 'Oh environment, why hast thou forsaken me?'

I am not scared to admit this in a public forum. That water was totally goddamn nasty. I am a clean person, and that hoodie was dirty. Dirtier than Christina Aguilera. Dirtier than the stagnant pools of water in foreign lands used to make special ebola-chlamydia-water-buffalo-feces cocktails for orphans to drink first thing in the morning. That water was really dirty.

I feel gross now.

Before this moment, I took pride in being a little dirty in a sexual way. Now that notion sickens me a little. I feel like I ought to carry around a spray bottle filled with bleach, spraying everything from coins to doorknobs to clothes in a department store. And no more spankings!

I think this is how obsessive-compulsive disorder begins.

way of the future. g