I was sitting in the laundrette with a man named Joe and all the washing machines and tumble driers sat with us, spinning, spinning, like little worlds on their axis. And I watched them for a short time – hypnotised, you might say – noise of the hums and churns of the washer machines as they revovled filled the space.
Joe stood up and sat down irregularly. It was a little unnerving. Joe was an idiot dressed as a genius, or so he spurted out, speaking as though he wasn’t actually Joe. When I asked what a genius wore he replied. A genius wears nothing, a genius is worn.
Exactly, I thought, exactly what I need in a downtown laundrette, this riddling maniac Joe telling me what exactly?..genius is fashion…a state of mind…a self imposed category…but then he imparted to me, quite frankly his philosophy regarding the perfect way to wash clothes, all the detials, the right type of fabric cleaner, paying close attention to the temperature of the water while at the same time airing the clothes before they go in to the machine for moths dirt, match sticks, then iron in a swift consistent top-down motion for 3mintues and 17seconds. Fascinating, he claimed.
O, it went on for quite some time, he talked and talked and talked and then suddenly Joe began to choke, quite without apparent cause, and he placed his hands over his own mouth as if having just swallowed a fly. I told him to sit down and take a breath and that I would never wash my clothes in the same way ever again.
He recovered. He waved out the window to me, but I hadn’t yet left the shop, obviously it wasn’t me he was waving too. You see his eye sight was pretty poor, he was always squinting. He had actually waved at a passing vagrant. God knows how he survived being so erratic. How could he care for himself? Waving at vagrants unwittingly, could led to dangerous conforntation.
So I asked God why, right there and then, and got no reply….unless….the lady that just fell over in the rain outside was some kind of sign, which I doubt, not that I doubt God, but I doubt that He sent a falling woman as a sign of Joes survival.
I left the laundrette abruptly, wondering why I was in there in the first place, for I had no clothes to wash or to pick up and began to wonder how I knew Joes name, and I couldn’t recall. Then I began to wonder who I was and how I had got to the laundrette and where had I been before. They say insane people don’t know the how and why of the lives.
I was at the house before and before that I was at the bank, the school, the swimming, o, that doesn’t explain how or why. O well, my penis pines a little pain, as though I had had painful sex the previous night and it was reminding me perhaps of my escapades, was I drunk the night before? I don’t feel drunk. Do I?
Before walking down into the abyss that is any modern high street and being lost forever, I turned back toward the laundrette, it seemed the safest, sanest option, it seemed like home, but I didn’t live there.
Joe said hullo and didn’t seem to realise I had just been in moments before talking to him. How can I help you Madame? He asked, I replied promptly with, I am a man, sir. He said with a tone of distrust, that’s what they all say, not one man between them if you ask me, all little ponies, all little farts. I was flabbergasted. What was he talking about? I asked him, he said, the quality of cheddar. I was becoming nauseated to the point of vomiting, vomitus gigantus, I was mad, Joe was a genius, but he was a waffling genius. An idiot genius and I was completely lost and characterless.
Joe stood, swivelled around on the spot, like a hyper TV presenter and went “Aha!†his face lit up like a Christmas tree well out of season. Fooled you, he said. I am a fool, I thought. You thought I was a total nut bar, a nut cracker, a huge Brazilian walnut hanging from a tree. (Nuts don’t grow on trees) I nodded sheepishly in agreement, not sure if this madman was going to attack me, or what ever the hell he might do next. He sat beside me, we were the only people in the laundrette it appear, not many people needed things washed on a rainy day in the down town dead laundrette. Joe probably knew this and he continued to talk, if you could call it talking.
He said, When I was in the war………he thought to himself for some time…………I died and came back: The end. It was curt and to the point. A little short on narrative, he hadn’t even introduced anyone, no detail, just a man sitting in a laundrette, being told a tiny story by a madman.
I left without knowing my name or my actually identity. I blame the writer personally. But the writer blames me, for not having enough character, enough pastiche. I should have brought washing, but I didn’t know I was coming until the writer put me in this shop, the fool, the fool, give me a name and a meaning, for God’s sake, don’t leave me to hang out to dry in this laundrette for eternity with Joe, the insane fool of a man, purposeless…spinning….mad…
(this was a bit thin and filmsy and weak
and some of the timing is out
and it is a little
immature
but i thought i would throw it up
that’s my style)