Existential Laundry
It used to be, I was never phased by an Arby’s curly fry. Four score discarded Google maps were beneath my notice. Uselessly-shredded lettuce raining from Subway sandwiches—meh. About the soda cans bursting in air I couldn’t be bothered to care. But in the last three weeks, I have become someone I never expected: one man desperately searching his life for any sign of a car wash.
I think I probably washed my Saturn three times in two years. It’s Buick predecessor—if lucky—so many times in four years. Now I see the dirt on the fenders and taillights. Unseemly. I’m aghast at the handful of dry leaves on the passenger floormat. Scandalous!
Why is it, then, that for the first time in my recollection I can’t find a single decent car wash? All there seem to be around here are the lousy automatic kind. I’ve never been satisfied with the result. Afterward, whatever part of the car was dirtiest somehow seems to have been cleaned the least. Far better are the sort without all the machinery: the good car wash is the large garage with the spray nozzle and the soaping brush. You know, the sort that have always been two in any ten-mile direction from home.
So where are they now? This city is sometimes disturbingly upscale, but these people all have cars. Dirtied, shall they go unwashed? Or lies there just beyond the horizon some Mecca of automotive cleanliness I am not devout enough to perceive?
