The Dry Cleaning Doldrums
The Dry Cleaning Let Down 4-28-07 The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing. Epictetus One at times likes to get high in a basement that is not rented by anyone. Wet carpet and dissonant noises frighten you as you slowly protect yourself with that nimbus of porous stone oscillating around your thankful head. I hear whistle take out delivery pseudo-murders scratching the names of doomed future children. The deliverers of unusual whistles, who needs pizza! I saw a more comically and aggressively trivial news headline than usual today, it read: Virginia Tech Students get questionnaire about Cho…or something like that. People are getting a questionnaire this must be disseminated to millions! I winced, mainly because I have some animal bone fragments aggravating a lower tooth with a history of being on ‘Domenic’s tooth rebellion activities watch list.’ I would put this teeth on a no fly list, but most of us know that teeth don’t fucking fly without being severely interrogated particularly in South American nations or nearby atolls or wherever extreme rendition is blessed by the loving freedom father on our heaven-earth. Any way, about this mysteriously named man Gary and my god damn dry cleaning. It’s been over two weeks since I hurriedly stopped by a dry cleaning place called ‘ That’s Brilliant Starch,’ a name that repelled me and attracted me with much brio in that tug of war of indecided affection that could spoil at any carcass punched moment. This was my third time dropping off dry cleaning in this location since my move to a town called Floral Park in New York. I live by the Belmont racetrack, yet I’ve never seen a live horse race. What does it mean? Nothing. The last dry cleaning establishment I used was in walking distance to my home, and the owner was an older Chinese man with a limp who obsessively listened to Japanese language cds in preparation for a trip he was to go on in three years! The reason why, or at least what this man wished to tell me, was that he would be able to get discounts ‘all over’ if he had acquired a bit of the language. Not knowing either language heard from this CD, it was a pleasantly disorienting experience hearing the man practice his sentences, pronunciation et cetera in a slightly nervous way as bits of stew spattered about the counter. Anyway, his son was retarded and a very energetic NY Yankees fan who I found fun to pal around with a bit while my items were being sorted and I was done spacing out on weird calendars with a sort of light bondage theme. I would try to get his goat by saying that certain players such as Jason Giambi looked like a drugged horse that has just sat on briar patch. Not understanding my point, or perhaps anything I said, he simply shrunk his face with a menacing grimace, and spouted at me: “You going hell, you know Yankees best, Giambi great, great, no you are not good for anything.” Maybe he was right. I’m sorry if my approximating his speech pattern offends anyone. I’m not exactly going for laughs here. Ok, so I don’ t see the woman I dealt with in the new dry cleaning place. She was friendly enough, and enjoyed my joking about getting a free microwave because of my new customer status. She wiltingly smiled very fleetingly, and told me i could have a Hershey’s fucking kiss because it was right there in a bowl reading ‘take me’. I was not flattered or impressed. So I return in this story to the day of dropping off the items I had stuffed in my usual bag with the busted zipper. I immediately noticed that for the hour of 3 PM the store was darkened, and there was no one else around. This new guy was amiable enough, but worked way quickly than one might find standard in these situations. He looked like he obviously was looking to split in a fucking hurry. It was ominously sneaky-slimy in hindsight I guess… Well, I got my receipt and took off, thinking the clothes will be ready in two days as usual for this place. I popped some sugar free Mentos, and smoked butts on my ride back home as perusal. I returned three day later, and not only was I not able to pick up my stuff, but the place was closed on a day it should have been open, and there was a crumby, shitty, wet, horrible, irregularly shaped piece of cardboard taped on to the inside that read: “UNDER NEW MANAGMENT, COMING SOON… I WILL BE BACK HERE MONDAY FROM 3 TO 5. What the fuck? I knew it. Something was happening. Something was not right. I tried to ignore this inconvenience, as I’m not one to make a big or little uproar of being inconvenienced. I think more relatively privileged (such as myself should be inconvenienced more often for certain reasons I will omit from detailing here.) Well I drove to the place on my way home from work, and all I saw was that spewy, corroded, fishy, slime ball scrawled sign in the same damn place, with same information. The second sign I came upon in my increasingly futile efforts to get my dry cleaning back over the last two weeks was: NEW MANAGMENT SOON…DON’T WORRY—-GARY. In future time, the ‘Don’t Worry’ would appear under Gary’s name, the handwriting betraying a sort of giddy jerkiness that could only rankle ones patience with it’s round hurried hand. Fucking Gary and his signs! Where is my knitted black hat with multi-colored triangles too delicate to be washed? Oh, I’m a pussy? Fuck off. Does Gary know that the great comedian Todd Barry complimented me for it, and used it for joke fodder? The hell he does, this cretin. Does he think anyone can just buy out some dry cleaning people and set up shop when he corrals new management into working there instead of doing it before hand? What the hell happened? Was it a family feud that pitted certain family members against each other! How I would love to descend upon both warring parties like a lynx with a bug up its bum! He wrote my ticket up in an unprofessional manner that day that seems so long ago. He asked me if I wished to have my shirts starched. I said no, I always say to no to that. He did place my dry cleaning items in a clearly separate pile. He must know something about this business. But maybe he’s just seen a movie or something. His act was perhaps a mere mimetic shrouding of actual know-how? God, I never thought I would have to deal with an annoying mysterious dry cleaning experience. It’s worse than waking up with your dirty substitute teacher in a Police video that Sting knew nothing about and was now suing the maker of it, and you were forced to participate in the well loved American tradition of humiliating yourself for perverse public consumption or as an adjunct to this fluke-sucked business. Gary, what the fuck? Sometimes a sign would read Gary would be there at such and such an hour. I would go there early, wait around, nothing. Sure, I had some spirited chats with fellow patrons that felt the dupe lightning strike them directly too. I came across no humor about the predicament. I resisted the urge to hurl the sordid contents in the boot of my Japanese car at the store frontage. I waited and waited, whipping up grand oral speeches in my mind that would be activated as soon as I walked into ‘That’s Brilliant Starch.’ The open doors would feel as light as cassowary bird eggs in space. I prey to the gods that Gary has the effrontery, the ‘freakin’ nerve to be there that special day. I hand him my ticket with an intense reticence, the kind that mummifies chatter-kunts in front of mall fountains and destroys their expensive phones by the powerful shrinking power of it’s rarefied silence, and makes the pennies in the mall fountains shoot upward into the atmosphere in celebration of it. Gary looks at me hard and soft, like some bored porno cameraman contemplating lunch at a tacky bistro where his ex is now bartending and occasionally flirts with him using a bottle of cheap tequila and green eye shadow. That will be $15.25. WHAT! The explosion! That rehearsed speech stored somewhere deep within my fulminating core: You kept my dry cleaning hostage Gary. You had me drive out of my way during certain limited windows of time to this dumpy dry cleaning store located next to the dilapidated Sizzler where the message had ominously been for the last two months on the rotating lit sign aloft it’s rusty poll: “You don’t know Fried Fish like…’ with something missing, but no further room, and certainly of no interest to the buffet discount hardcore tum-tums and all of their acolytes. You kept my dry cleaning hostage, made a mockery of my patience, kept me guessing if the whole business was sparkling joke-farce at many people’s expense. My wife makes jokes about me driving there for nothing. I’m out of cigarettes just when my furious cold-snap claws it’s way throughout my troubled body and I need one to quell an imminent rage-out. Of course I think I see people laughing at me, snickering at me in their hideous white sneakers as I kick the door lightly, in fear of destroying property. Why should I fear like some corpulent capitalist bip-bop subject playing with the empty balls of an enervating experience? I still have not received my dry cleaning. The store is sill not open. The Sizzler lunch crowd more harrowing looking than usual. I will return there on Monday May 1st 2007 at exactly 3pm as instructed by the crude sign, the only communication I can ‘rely on.’ Cruel tawdry experience to live through! Is it a big deal? I think it is. I think it is. I must go to Suds R Us now to drop off my laundry. I haven’t the time to do it myself today. I am fortunate enough to be going to the Tribeca film Festival. 4-28-07
