Scott Capurro
Gay Times
June, 2007
Scabies? What is this, Victorian England? If so, where’s the local sulfur baths? Why bother, when those mites clearly have a crush, this being my second infestation in eleven months. Maybe I taste good. My flesh is soft and sweet and easy to burrow under. When thought of in that way, being borrowed by bugs seems almost charitable, like I’m helping out some tiny, shy homeless mates.
But like the aftermath of a frat party, it’s the feces left behind that makes my skin both scab up and crawl. How filthy is that sauna in Shoreditch? Or those towels in Brussels? Or those twins in Prague? The glamour never stops when you’re a c-list celebrity traveling 3rd class. But I don’t recall Leonardo DiCaprio having scabies on the Titanic. Of course he’s very thin-skinned. I did wish, whilst sleepily watching him chase that matronly mistress, that he was being boiled alive. And so the story goes.
I have to boil everything. Scabies hide, in bedding and behind one’s knees, so all my cloth has to be heated up, and, consequently, burnt dry. Sadly, at home I have a tiny dryer which only barely, begrudgingly warms, so it’s off to the local Laundromat on Bethnal Green Road I waddle, rubber gloved and ready to murder some mites.
But nothing, not even murder, is easy in London. There’s always someone standing between you and your happiness. Dr. Who takes many, many forms. In this case, it is the two women who run the laundry. They don’t own the place. They merely work there, but like Ms. Tennant, when on sight, they take over.
Fresh (ish) out of central casting, Sandra and Carol wash other peoples’ dirty laundry three days a week. “We’re here on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.” It’s Tuesday. My timing is, as usual, both impeccable and personally damming. “On Thursdays we have our nails done.” Their nails are clean and very pointed and probably used for self-defense.
Orange-faced and bleached blond, and shrouded in nicotine, they individually own villas in Spain. That part of Spain, I imagine, where the yards are cement and the sand is shipped in. Fortunately, they like helping men, but I’m wearing a pink Izod and my ears are in proportion, so I’m out of luck.
Every dryer I try to shove my soggy duvet into is broken. Or so the hand-written black scrawl on several torn sheets of yellow paper warn. Only one dryer works, and like firemen moving buckets of water, the ladies quick change fabrics in and out of it so quickly my head spins faster then the drum.
I go for green tea, and when I return, I find the ‘broken’ signs have been removed from two machines, and the ladies have, like Israeli settlers, moved in. They’re actually sitting in front of those two dryers, which to me says those metal monstrosities are the best. I’m American, so I support Israel, but I intend to disarm, affectionately.
“Ladies.” I’m all smiles and soft vowels. “Might I take advantage of one of those dryers?” They stare stone-faced, like experienced wardens. Perhaps my yellow gloves are worrisome. They might think I’m here to cancel a debt. Perhaps one of them fucked a Krays brother. The gay one. Well, gayer. Suddenly I realize this all looks like a flash back on CSI: E2. “I won’t be long.”
A young man of Middle Eastern origin rushes in, cradling soiled shirts, like they’re his first-born. I back off, predicting a battle. He nervously shoves darks and whites into a washing machine, which I find both reassuring, the idea that those colors could work together; and shocking, because straight men are so domestically clueless.
Israel, amazingly, rushes to Palestine’s defense. The ladies surround him, separating his shades and manipulating his coinage. The right buttons are pushed, and everyone walks away smiling, practically post-coital.
However, my fingertips are wrinkling from having held my wet bedding for so long. Finally Carol takes pity. She is the smallest and so the most sensible. She can see the determination in my eyes, and after six children and twenty-three years hawking fabric softener, she’s learnt to choose her battles.
“Leave it.” She doesn’t make eye contact. She’s perusing ‘Hello’ mag, looking, I suppose, for role models. Or suspects. “Come back in two hours.”
When I return, my duvet is wrapped in brown paper. The ladies are gone, but heir scent remains, like a victor’s flag. Later, in bed and swathed in their pine aroma, I itch, and wonder how many chips they’ve eaten for dinner, and where their red phone box will next land.