Stranger in a Car Wash

Hi, my name is Jonathan. People come up to me and ask, “Jonathan, how have you managed to sleep with so many girls in your life? You’ve already had sex with three and you’re only in your forties.” And I answer that I have found the fountain of youth of having sex with girls.

I am talking, of course, about car washes.

Cruising for sex in a car wash is an excellent idea because there is no competition. No other guys have thought to chase women at car washes for some reason. I don’t know what this reason is but what I do know is that since there are no other men looking for sex in car washes I am the primary predator in the car wash.

Girls in car washes are so great because they obviously care enough to keep up appearances, since they are washing their car. This is good because I don’t want to have sex with a girl that doesn’t care about what her car looks like.

Sometimes I like to pretend I am James Bond when I’m at the car wash. I imagine that I am going up to an attractive woman who is washing her car and say something sexy. She says something sexy back and I say “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” These fantasies are usually interrupted by mace entering my eyes.

Here are some tips for picking up girls at car washes. Don’t use them in my car wash though because it is mine.

1) Make sure you are driving a cool car when you are looking for a sexual partner in a car wash. There is nothing sexier in a car wash than a sexy car. Sometimes I go to a car wash to get my car washed so its clean and shiny for when I go to another car wash afterwards to find a woman to have sex with.

2) Make sure your son or someone else’s son that looks kind of like you is in your car. Women who will have sex with you in car washes love kids. If he cries for his mommy, say “Daddy will buy you McDonald’s after he’s done boning this fine young woman from the car wash.”

3) Make sure you intimidate the 18 year old car wash attendant in front of the girl you are planning to have sex with. Make sure you demand a refund. If possible, demand two refunds. One for another day you came in. And make him give her a refund too. This shows that you as a middle aged male are superior to the teenage car wash attendant, which is important because he might be trying to have sex with the same woman at the car wash.

4) No doesn’t always mean no. Sometimes no means “no and don’t follow me back to my house in your car.” I feel like people should be more clear about these things but apparently some people like to imply.

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(Based on a real occurrence at the car wash. He totally did ask for two refunds.)

People often ask me what it is like to work at a car wash. I tell them it is like making a list of all the things that you don’t want to do and then doing them in list order.

One day I hope to have a more tolerable time at the car wash. Such a day would go as follows:

3:00 PM: I arrive at the car wash.

3:02 PM: I am shot in the neck with an arrow and die. I do not have to clean my blood from the parking lot.

I have often entertained the idea of a perfect day at the car wash. It is disappointing to me that this day has not happened yet. Here is this perfect day for your reposting (please?) pleasure.

3:00 PM: I arrive at the car wash.

3:07 PM: I realize that nothing is broken. I start to get nervous.

3:12 PM: I realize nothing needs to be cleaned. Something is definitely wrong here.

3:15 PM: I try to shovel the dirt from the pits of the car wash. There is no dirt. I consult Nostradamus for omens of the end of time.

3:20 PM: An attractive woman drives into the car wash. She rolls down her window and says “Sir, can you fill it up?” I say, “I’m sorry ma’am, this is not a gas station, this is a car wash.” She takes off her sunglasses. “I know.”  she says. The CSI Miami theme plays.

3:21 PM: I make soapy love to this woman.

3:30 PM: Said woman pays me for my services. I begin to explain that I am not a prostitute but then realize that its free money and that maybe being a prostitute would be better than being a car wash attendant so I take the money.

3:35 PM:I realize what said woman meant when she said “Sir, can you fill it up?” Clever. Also the fact that the CSI Miami theme played makes a lot more sense now.

3:40 PM: The foam in the foam brushes magically turns into cotton candy.

3:45 PM: I run out of good things that could happen at the car wash. I am shot in the neck with an arrow and die. I do not have to clean my own blood from the parking lot.

(Note: This post may appear tasteless considering the terrible natural disaster that occurred today. My heart truly does go out to all those affected by the terrible earthquake today. Besides, fuck you, its my blog.)

(Note 2: I have some sort of virus that imitates what I imagine severe cocaine withdrawal feels like, and am on so much medication right now that I feel qualified to write the sequel to Naked Lunch. As such, this post may be utter nonsense.)

(Note 3: Naked Lunch is a novel, you sick bastards.)

(Note 4: Actually, you probably weren’t far off the mark.)

(Note 5: All these notes make me feel like David Foster Wallace.)

On Monday my car wash was completely submerged in water.

Our car wash is strategically placed directly next to a river, presumably so that we can reach an entirely new demographic in fish. When the end-of-the-world-omen snows melted, the river flooded the banks and swept into the car wash, spreading mud everywhere but actually getting a lot of the garbage that I couldn’t be bothered to pick up swept into the street. There’s a bright side to everything.

We had to close the car wash, but after I thought about it: Isn’t a car wash that’s completely submerged in water the best kind of car wash ever? Its like a bathtub for your car. You could like roll in and we could play that Christina Aguilera song about working at a car wash under the sea* on loudspeakers and you could chase beach balls in your car and we could pump chemicals into the water and your car would be all clean and we could introduce sea life into the car wash and oh my god I’m on so much medication right now.

I went in the day after to clean the mud from the ground.

Mud, prepare to be my bitch.

Unfortunately, the tools I had to work with were a pushbroom and a leaf blower. If you’ve ever tried to scrape mud off of an unlevel surface in a timely fashion, you would know that holy fucking fuck its fucking hard. All the little crevices in the asphalt became hellish mud pits.

We are mud, and we hate you.

After about two hours agonizing over the mud that wouldn’t be scraped away and how sick I was and how much medication I was on, I went home. 

The mud won.

(*Note 6: Why does everyone think its necessary to sing this song when I tell them I work at a car wash? Its not even a joke. I guess its supposed to be funny because like, the song is about working at a car wash and that’s what I do, but like, if that’s the extent of your joke, I’m glad that this is my blog and not yours. Because if it was yours it would suck.)

People seem to think that because I work at a car wash, I will do whatever they want for a few bucks. However, a car wash attendant is not a stripper, and I have better things to do than dry off your car for two dollars.

Here are some key differences between car wash attendants and strippers.

1) Car wash attendants attend to car washes. Strippers take off their clothes for money.

2) A car wash attendant has things to do other than serve the customer. A stripper takes of their clothes for money.

3) A car wash attendant’s job is to clean the car wash. A stripper’s job is to take off their clothes for money.

4) A car wash attendant does not dance for the amusement of others. Most of the time. A stripper takes off their clothes for money.

As you can clearly see, I am not a stripper. So dry your own damn car and keep your two dollars.

One thing that I have learned while working at the car wash is that car washing is serious business. Nobody comes to the car wash with a smile on their face. People have shit to do, goddamnit, and they’re not going to let some trucker with a truck that looks like he drove straight out of the ass of Swamp Thing get in the way of their perfect car.

Because, as they say, time is money, and because everyone is clearly in far more of a rush than everyone else all at the same time, it is only natural for some people to lose their cool. It is also only natural that they take their frustration out on the best looking person in the car wash — me. And I can comfortably say that I’m the best looking person in the car wash because I’m the only one at the car wash not compensating for looks by making my car shiny.

I cannot make the person in front of you wash their car faster. I do not have supernatural temporal abilities or the authority to say, “fuck you, it doesn’t take a half hour to wash your goddamn car, get the hell out of here.” If I did I would say that all the time to lots of people. If someone wants to dump their fucking life savings into the car wash and soap up their car all weekend because Courtney Love came far too close to touching it, they can do that. So please stop asking me to do things that I can’t do. Please don’t use that tone of voice that says “you’re the car wash guy, do something about it.” Because I can’t do anything about it. Please don’t raise your voice. Let me give you some Armor-All and we’ll be friends again.

People need to understand that if you’re going to a car wash, your time is clearly not all that valuable. Jack Bauer never got his car washed during seasons of 24 (or at least not that I saw but what would I know, I stopped watching that show after I realized it sucked… seven minutes into the first episode). There’s an example of someone with some real shit to do. Batman never got the Batmobile waxed while in pursuit of the Joker. The Flintstones never got that crazy feet-powered car foamed up while in the middle of some rediculous prehistoric hijinx. Your time is not nearly as important as that of these people.

So please. Stop asking me to do things that I don’t have the ability to do, and don’t get upset with me when I don’t do them. I realize that you have to get back to the world of middle-class labor with a shiny car so that you can get all the middle-class and middle-aged tail, but there’s really nothing that I can do.

A middle-aged trucker tried to bum a cigarette off of me today while I was at work. I don’t smoke and was not carrying any cigarettes. I’ve been trying to think of a joke that does this sort of situation justice but I honestly can’t think of one. So here’s a picture of this person’s lungs probably looked like. 

As I have often said, I work with all kinds of people. This includes DJ’s, which, as I learned one day, are in fact people too.

One day a man comes up to me and asks me to dry his car. Unfortunately, I had just come down with a severe case of having better shit to do that day, and so I politely told him I could not. That is when this exchange happened, or some warped form of this exchange, I’m still trying to grasp exactly how this conversation came about.

Him: I’m just coming back from [some place].

Me: Oh, that’s nice.

Him: Yeah, not really. I had a problem with a girl.

Me: Oh. 

Him: Yeah. Don’t ever get involved with girls. Bad things happen. Even to DJs. I’m a DJ.

Here I took a double take. This man was clearly in his early forties, and did not at all look like what I consider a DJ to look like. There was also the fact that he seemed to be suggesting that I should be gay (which actually gets suggested to me a lot more than you’d think) and that he seemed to think that I thought that DJ’s were some sort of immortal gods who when they aren’t making scratchy noises on turntables aree frolicking in the Garden of Eden or playing catch with Zeus’s thunderbolts. 

At this point, he seemed to confuse my expression of utter disinterest with an expression of interest, and went on. 

Him: Have you ever been to [some other place I’ve never heard of]?

Me: No, sorry.

Him: It used to be a great party town. Then the cops ruined it. 

Me: Oh, I see.

Him: Yeah. I got pulled over by the cops twice last weekend. I mean, I understand if like you’re really drunk they should pull you over. But like if you’re a little bit tipsy, I think they should just leave you alone.

Me: …

Him: Anyway, that’s why I’m bringing my big truck this weekend. I’ll run ‘em over.

Me:…?!?!?!

Him: I’m kidding. I’m not actually going to run them over. I don’t want you thinking I would run over a cop.

So there you have it. DJ’s are people too.

Even this guy. Just like you and me.

I have to deal with all sorts of people from all different fields in my job. Only once have I had to work with a fisherman. He was an adorable old man who spoke in a stereotypical fisherman voice. He sort of reminded me of Santiago in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. When he asked me if he could dump some garbage in my dumpster, of course I said yes. “As long as its not alot of stuff,” I said. “Nah, its only about twenty pounds.”

At this point, my danger sense went off. There was no way he was planning on dumping fish in my dumpster. Nobody goes to a car wash and dumps twenty pounds of sea life in someone’s dumpster. It’ll be fine.

What I found waiting for me in my dumpster: 

The worst thing about this was not, as you might believe, the stench, which would make Kevin James’s sweat smell like perfume, but the fact that these shrimp still had their heads attached. If you’ve never seen a shrimp’s eyes, they look something like this:

Shrimp eyes actually have the power to rip your soul from your body. This is a true fact supported by years of research in the field of fuck you, its my blog and I decide what is and is not fact.

Now you may be thinking, “But you told him he could use your dumpster! This is really your fault!” However, this is flawed logic. If I was a plumber, and I came into your place of business and said, “hello, can I use your trash can?” and you say yes, and I proceed to take a twenty-pound shit in your trash can, you would be very upset. The same is true for this situation. When I said this old man could use our dumpster, I expected that he use it to dump garbage. I thought there was a mutually understanding that you shouldn’t dump goddamn corpses of living things in people’s dumpsters. 

“Now is the time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for. Now let’s go dump some shrimp in this poor bastard’s dumpster.”