It always seems to happen that the greatest moments of inspiration to write come at the same moment when I have no pen on me. I also am plagued with a horrible memory for events and emotions. I desperately have to try to remember something that happened even an hour ago. This i can contribute to my few but intense years of drug addiction, and the drug that I chose to be addicted to is, from what I have heard, one of the few drugs that causes permanent brain damage, in particular to memory.
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Today I finally committed to doing my laundry. I accumulated almost a full garbage bag. I live in an environment not unlike the old abandoned house that Edward and Brad live in in Fight Club. It’s like camping indoors. We have no stove, let alone a working laundry/dryer. I take my laundry to this little laundromat on the corner of Abbott and Hastings. Right across the street from where there are always 6 or 7 crackheads gathering to buy crack, smoke crack or wait for their next hit or whatever else it is they do standing there. The pleasant old asian man who owns the place knows me well by now. I’m seemingly one of his few patrons who is straight and doesn’t cause him a hastle. Although he speaks limited english and our communication is difficult, we have a good relationship and is people like him that make me really question my racist tendencies towards other members of his race. He let me use the tripple loader cause all the other machines were full as is usually the case at this particular laundromat dispite the inconsistency with the number of people actually in the establishment. I’m guessing, given the local population, most come in, drop off their limited number of clothing articles in a messed up state and go off to score their dope or for some other reason, completely forget about their laundry that they have now left unattended and occupying machines for hours so that people like me have no other option than to be rejected or use the professional Triple Loader. I was quietly reading my book, the sun warming my back through the window when I was distracted from my utopian zen-like state to the bickering between some other patrons. The 6 foot red headed wannnabe biker wearing a west coast choppers shirt and wrap arounds yelling down at a remarkably short elderly couple of Native decent. I only mention the race of the couple because of the context of their dispute – race. It has been a while since I had witnessed a public display of racial intollerance of this magnitude. I know not what spurred this argument for I only started paying attention when I heard Fuck Fuck Fuck enough times for it to be unusual in these parts. I sat at a table in the corner reading, no, pretending to read, my Jerry Stahl book about junkies while I watched people react in junky land. Not wanting to be involved, I kept reading the same paragraph over and over not actually paying any attention to the insuing fight.
On the native defensive the argument consisted of, “Go home you fucking DP!” “I was born here, go back to your fucking country!” “Fucking racist whitee!”
The wannabe biker had now found a common ground with the three other white guys in the place all of whom were doing the crack ballet while they tried hard to load their soiled clothes into the machines. All of them in chorus retorting to the natives crys with racial slanders… “Fucking salmon head!” “Fuck you you fucking teepee head!” “This is my fucking country, I was born here!” “Fucking racist!” “You sold your country for a fucking six-pack!” “Go back to your reserve!”
Blah Blah Blah… it was entertaining at the time…
It’s sunny out, I’m gonna go ride my bike.
Funny how I laugh at myself. When I laugh at myself it is cause I realize how stupid I really am. My laughter is not out of surprise or humour, but nervousness.
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