Back in Germany.
| 30.03.2004 | Why I hate my laundromat |
First point: I’m living in Germany again.
Second point: My laundromat sucks. I discovered this after paying 40 euros for a small bag of laundry. No, not a gaping bag full of laundry. A small shopping bag of socks, underwear, two t-shirts, three collared short-sleeve shirts and one pair of jeans. This reminds me of the time I ordered a meal of scallops in Venice and paid $20 for exactly four bites of food—two bites of scallops, and two bites of shrimp (not proper prawns, tiny shrimp). $5 a bite.
Why didn’t you ask ahead of time how much it would cost, you might ask (the lady working at my hotel did, after finding out how much I paid). Well, I did of course. This being Europe, and the dollar being weak, I have gotten accustomed to lubricating my asshole before preparing to pay a bill. The response was, it won’t be “much too expensive”. Hmm, I should have considered the wording more properly. She didn’t say it won’t be expensive, or even too expensive. It won’t be _much_ too expensive. Translation: you’ll walk away rubbing your asshole, but at least you’ll be walking.
Now you’d think when paying 40 euros for a bag of laundry, you’d get a silver bow or at least a snotty French accent to make you feel you’ve been let in on a service reserved for royalty. But no this was Germany, so the girl who I had to pay was actually nice and, furthermore, also shocked, and asked her manager if it was possible that it was actually so expensive. The manager, whose laundromat sits above a nice restaurant which she was clearly anxious to go down to, merely explained that each pair of underwear was 1 euro, each pair of socks 50 cents, each t-shirt 2 euros (if I recall, I’m still punch-drunk from the bill), and each collared shirt 3.50. I was too shocked to explain that jeans do not, in fact, ever need ironing, and it doesn’t constitute a service to anyone that wears jeans. Now if I can briefly run through the math, you can appreciate the blow by blow shock as it hit me. First, I don’t wear boxers, I wear plain, cheap, no-brand white undies. Now, I paid roughly 3 bucks a piece to purchase these. If they cost 1 euro a piece (roughly $1.25) to clean, then if I just wear them for three days instead of one, I can throw them away, skid marks and all, buy a totally new pair and pocket the extra 75 cents. (That was three games of Pac Man, back in the Day. Or better yet, three games of Shinobi.) The socks are not so bad, but let’s consider the shirts and t-shirts. First, one was my Cambodia t-shirt, purchased in…Cambodia. Now, I paid roughly $1.66 for this t-shirt (best buck sixty-six I ever spent). I paid 2 euros to have this cleaned. That’s the cost of one new replacement shirt and 4 bottles of clean cold water (back in Cambodia). Next consider my short-sleeve collared shirts. I purchased them in Shanghai at Carrefoure (a French hypermarket) for $2.50 each. They have never been ironed. Until now. You do not iron shirts that cost $2.50. You just don’t. So I had three of these. At 3.50 euro a piece, that’s like one new shirt and $1.75 extra for each shirt, so 3 new shirts and $5.25 leftover. Now with that $5.25 I could easily buy a fake Rolex watch in Shanghai and a bootleg copy of Saturday Night Fever.
So this means, for the price of my laundry, I could instead have been struttin’ my stuff in a shiny Cambodia t-shirt, throwing my old shirt behind me so my pits are fresh and clean, setting up my fly girl grinding to Stayin’ Alive in a nice new collared shirt, both of us sucking down nice cold (non-diarrhea-producing) water, with that shiny gold watch on my wrist, and setting my baby girl up right some brand new tighty-whities, both of us shooting out some serious ninja stars during our 10 games of Shinobi apiece! (Note, I have no fly girl or baby doll, which is why I’m writing this email.) But damn, damn, damn! Can you imagine?! What girl wouldn’t feel set up right, shooting out ninja stars in her fresh tighty-whities, with her man beside her in his solid wannabe-gold watch and his flavaricious Khmer Alphabet t-shirt? Suh-weet! Yeah ladies, after hearing how pimp I treats my girls, I know you’ll be lining up to get some, but there’s only so much fro to go round.
Why am I in Germany? Who cares anymore. I stopped having explanations for this shit.
Fro B.