My apartment building has just one urine-scented laundry room with just two washers and two dryers. I think this would be almost but not quite sufficient, if it wasn’t for this one Mexican dude who is in there constantly. And when I say constantly, I mean, I think it’s not impossible that he lives in the boiler room attached to it. I don’t know what his deal is, but I’m not even sure he lives in this building.

I have at least eleventy loads of laundry to do, and they could have been done by now, except that I’ve been having to do them one a day for the last week. This guy is in there every night, all night. He’s not done until 4 or 5 am, so unless I want to wait until then, I have to be sneaky to get a load in when he’s not looking. Because he can’t be polite and use only one machine, leaving one for somebody else. Ohhh, no.

I’ve come to the conclusion that either there are 43 Mexicans living in one of these units, and he’s the designated laundry whore, or he’s got some kind of Mexican ghetto laundry service scam going, or he does in fact live in the boiler room, and figures running the machines all night for $1 each qualifies as rent. Yesterday at 7pm, though, he asked me to hold the door open for him, because he wanted to get his bike. Sounded a bit suspicious to me, since if he wanted his bike, maybe he should have brought his key instead of waiting around outside the laundry/bike room until someone let him in, huh. So I hung around outside for a while. Never came out with a bike, big surprise. Probably just the beginning of his shift. When he’s in there, he flips the deadbolt so the door can’t close and lock.

The other annoying thing is that whenever he’s doing laundry (so, all the time), he stands around outside the room instead of going back inside his supposed apartment. Sometimes with several other Mexicans. Often drunk. Look, guys, it takes a lot of effort to avoid people all day and be this anti-social. Stop making me acknowledge you. All of his laundry bags are numbered. What are the numbers for? Does he have so many kids that he can’t remember them all? And if he ever happens to leave a machine empty for five minutes, he unplugs it, so people will think it’s not working (I, however, am not a moron, and am not fooled). Is he just an asshole, or what.

I don’t know what any of this means. I suppose I could question him one of these days, but I have a strict policy of never talking to people, and besides, it’s much more fun to imagine sinister motives, and get more and more passive aggressive because I have a veritable mountain of dirty clothes chilling out in my room that I can’t do anything about. Anyway, I don’t speak Spanish, and he doesn’t speak very much English.

Sean says maybe he’s laundering money.

Ho ho ho. Good one.

I’m just going to walk around naked from now on. Less freakin’ hassle. As long as I stay inside, anyway.