STANK

I spent last week in Spokane, visiting friends and generally enjoying the people. Generally.

The dogs came along this time, which meant a few things:

1. In the grade of hotel that allows dogs, they do not leave boxes of peanut brittle on your bed.
2. Someone peed in my car on the way across the state.
3. During the leash-up at my hotel room's door, Fredo slipped behind me into the hallway. He immediately discovered the pleasures of room-service. Specifically, he discovered my neighbors' trays of half-eaten food left on the hallway floor. He discovered the hell out of them.

I'm pretty sure that point #2 had to do with Fredo, as well, in that same way that I'm pretty sure that Adam Sandler's next movie will feature a fart joke. I can't prove it, but what possible counter-argument is there?

Thus did I unexpectedly end up at a seedy Spokane laundromat at 7am. Although it's been several decades, this environment is still very much...well, not home. That would imply that I ever didn't hate every second of being there. But it's surely familiar.

The same folks were there, too. The bedraggled middle-aged clerk was holding forth about her religion, hating her job too much to care if anyone got her fired. There was a strung-out homeless guy doing a wash and generally making expert use of the bathroom. There was a guy who clearly had shattered his eye socket some years ago and who, equally clearly, had never had it treated. It healed badly, and that half of his face looked like it was melting. I wondered about his peripheral vision when he was driving. I wanted to slap him like Burgess Meredith in Rocky II.

Now you didn't even see that comin', did ya? And that's comin' from a broken down pug like me. What do ya think a Buick would do to ya?

Hurt me bad I guess...

It'd hoit ya poimanent!

And of course, there was the well-dressed professional guy who was completely out of place, unexpectedly at a laundromat, fidgeting nervously and not making eye contact with the plebeians surrounding him. I found his air of superiority offensive.

I didn't know these people, and yet I knew them intimately. Eye-socket guy and sink-bath guy got into a spirited debate. As near as I could tell, the core disagreement involved which of them loves weed more. Someone entered Jesus into evidence. I marveled as they fervently disagreed about who was more certain that Jesus' healing miracles were reliant upon weed.

I am witnessing a miracle, I thought. This is the stupidest argument ever conceived by stoners. Which means it is the stupidest argument that has ever been.

A twitchy guy in a baseball cap and comically baggy clothes walked into the laundromat, nervously surveying the room and walking to the other side. He brought no laundry. He was just pacing and unsubtly watching us.

Aaaand I'm out, I thought, gathering my things.

"This is some shady-ass shit going on over there," said eye-socket guy, gathering his things, his peripheral vision just fine, thanks.

There's no place like home.