Know Yourself Clean

At Slosh, the combination bar and laundromat, everyone is dressed like absolute shit. It’s practically a rule. Even if you’re not washing a gargantuan pile of underwear and faded jeans, you’ve got to come into the place looking like you’re on your last t-shirt that passes the smell test. The drinks are cheap at Slosh and the bar side of the place is dimly lit, with free pool and darts and not a single ounce of pretense, so of course Columbus’ born and bred wander in there, wearing pit-yellowed ribbed tanks and swishy basketball shorts. There’s a uniform for these kinds of establishments and even the bartender & quarter machine restocker Michelle follows it.

Every rule is proven by an exception, which in this case is Neil, who is wearing a pale pink slip made of silky material, a leather bomber jacket, and black Timb boots above which a line of purple argyle sock can be seen. He is not wearing a single slash of makeup, but his hair is slicked back, and in the dimmer lights of Slosh’s bar side, he looks 1990's-by-way-of-2015 grunge-goth chic. Nobody says anything and only new customers stare. Often it’s not the locals who are the problem, but fresh-faced ignorant freshmen, who’ve slipped into the place with a fake ID.

This isn’t the type of place where Neil can expect to catch much shit, despite all the split ends and the Ohio State sweatpants draped over nearly every human body. Of course, Neil might catch shit anywhere, whether he expects it or not. That’s why Neil stays close to places he gets a good vibe from, but never counts on it staying that way.

He’s never had an issue at Slosh, no matter what cobbled-together laundry-day fashion he’s sporting, whether he comes in with makeup or not. Michelle believes her presence might have something to do with that, though she wouldn’t be enough to snuff out the flames of discord, if some gaggle of bitchfucks was determined to light it.

The crowd is mostly Columbusites too uncool or broke to spend money in the Short North, but too interesting to stagger drunkenly around the fringes of campus on a Friday night. They are old and young, erudite and straightforward, humble and self-superior in equal measures. Michelle paces slowly behind the bar and pours drinks. The tips are often change- but never quarters, which here are deeply valued. Bags of jalapeño chips hang from metal clips beside the water stained mirror, which Michelle uses to apprise her eye bags and Neil uses, on some days, to tend to his matte purple lipstick. But it’s the day of the Michigan game, at home, so maybe that’s why her roommate is bare faced.

There is something wrong with one of the taps or the keg is too old; the Bud tastes skunky and stale. A man in a puffy purple down jacket tries to push a chip card into Michelle’s hand and she demurs. The guy’s buddy points to the CASH ONLY sign. A middle aged woman with fake auburn hair and Kate Bush eyeshadow tugs a five from her (too loose, too Bedazzled) jeans and pushes it the parkaed dude’s way. They haven’t spoken all night and don’t seem to know one another but that’s the spirit of the place. Plus $5 goes a long way. It can get you two well drinks or a couple of beers. Maybe a shot of something nobody likes in this city, like Mallort.

Neil is throwing darts and Michelle is watching him. His form is terrible because the jacket is zipped shut. She’s not sure if he’s got it closed like that because he’ll be going out for a smoke soon, because he’s a little jittery, or because he wants his chest covered. She doesn’t make fun of it even though she wants to. Her past attempts at sisterly ribbing have not gone over super well. Neil hits the board most of the time despite his sartorial handicap. When he misses, he hits the wood panels on the side of the board. No harm done.

Beside Neil is his competitor, a junior philosophy major named Richard. He’s Nuyorican and not used to Ohio’s wide, drab expanses or OSU’s rolling fields of “urban campus” yet. When he plays beer pong, he always requests that the cups be laid out in a way that recalls New York’s boroughs. A lot of beer pong gets played at Slosh. A lot of it gets played in Columbus, in general. Richard’s the only person Michelle knows who doesn’t favor the standard triangle arrangement. He catches her looking. She smiles at him.

Neil gets a dart stuck in the wood and his forearm bulges slightly as he pulls at it. His nails are short right now, but he still moves his hands with delicacy. He has weak hands anyway, gnarled at the knuckles and prematurely aged. Before anyone can notice, Michelle flits out behind the bar and comes over to him to pluck the dart out. A vodka tonic with lemon settles in his hand. He sips it through the tiny stirrer straw.

“I think your buzzer wet off,” Michelle says, and he frowns. Pats his coat pocket.

“I have quarters to spare,” Richard cuts in. Indeed, there’s a roll on the table, next to his book and his pack of American Spirit.

“I might be more than one short,” Neil says. He can count on Michelle to shake a few loose from the machine if needed. She’s kinda sick of having to do it.

Richard bats away Neil’s concern and hands the whole roll over. Ten dollars in change, almost. For Neil, or for Michelle, this is not negligible money. It could put gas in the old green Torolla, buy a meal or two. Neil has been doing okay lately, booking lots of clients, and the salon has been decent about tipping him out, but you never know how long that’s gonna last. Slosh doesn’t exactly keep Michelle solvent either.

Neil walks away, pigeon toed, to the rows and rows of pea green washing machines in the more brightly lit half of the establishment. From the washer’s wide, silver mouth he withdraws more masculine clothing — a sea of yellow flannels and striped black t-shirts. Deeper in the mound are flashier things, lace-trimmed tops and fit and flare dresses, polyester tops with ruffles or dark floral patterns. It’s pretty much an even mix. Neil wears the drabber stuff to class and the softer, prettier stuff everywhere else.

Richard looks at Michelle and shrugs, wordless but engaged.

She says, “Let me buy you a drink.”

Richard came into Slosh for the first time last month but has been showing up every weekend lately. He has a lot of black t-shirts to keep clean. His wardrobe is timeless: dark jeans, black socks, black t’s, and a modest variety of dulling dark-colored sweaters. His glasses are thick, square, and black. His hair is a little long, and shiny black locks flop over his ears and give his head a slightly mushroomy shape. When he comes in, he reads at a table near the window and drinks well whiskey and coke. Michelle has noticed. She brings him his favored drink, with an e

“Sorry if my friend disturbed your reading, by the way,” she says, passing the drink to him.

“What, no. Neil’s great.”

“He is great,” Michelle says protectively, sussing him out.

Richard notices. “You don’t have to be his keeper you know.”

Michelle sighs and says, “You’re right, you’re right, it’s probably shitty of me.” She always feels like she must run interference between Neil and the hateful fucks of the world, but as strategies go it’s been seeming less and less cool as he gets older. “Neil’s his own person, I get wrapped up in his business too much.”

“You sure do,” Neil says from a few feet behind her. He plants himself in between her and Richard and takes the darts from the table. “Though to be fair, you do that to everyone in this scumhole.”

Richard’s eyes crinkle and then he laughs, and Michelle has to smile and admit to that it’s absolutely true. She’d been about to ask Richard what he was reading before Neil wandered back up, even though she’d seen the cover. Peter Singer rang a bell — she thought he was some kind of pro-abortion guy, or maybe somebody who claimed free will wasn’t a thing, Michelle couldn’t remember. She’d only taken one philosophy class. She wanted to get to know her regular patrons better. But knowing was a kind of ownership, really, and not everyone was comfortable giving that part of themselves to her.

“Excuse me there, dollface,” Neil says in an affected, mid-century broadcaster voice, “but you’re in my line of sight. Could you be a good sport and step back a few paces?”

“I can do you better than that,” Michelle says, and goes into the stockroom.

Neil and Michelle were both from Marion, and had known each other since middle school. A few of those years had been really dicey for Neil, even he would admit that. Michelle had been on the football team. She could knock a douchebag over, and did, sometimes often. She liked being a protector, a watcher. It was the only thing about her that felt unique. So of course she moved to Columbus with her best-only friend. If he didn’t like all the care she put into him, he could move out or stop coming to Slosh.

Neil throws a few more darts but then his joint pain starts to flare up. He winces and sits down. Richard flings a few at the board disinterestedly, nearly hitting the center each time. Then he turns and sees his new companion staring at his hands.

“Something wrong?”

Neil shrugs. Lifts his hands. “I used to have these really terrifying almond-shaped acrylics, in this sooty black color, it made me feel so powerful.”

Richard sits down and takes a long sip. His eyes are dark and brown and big, and drink the silence up.

“I have rheumatoid arthritis,” Neil says. He bends down to glass of vodka tonic and drains it without picking it up.

While he’s drinking, Richard says, “Your hands are beautiful.”

Neil snorts. “Great. Like a beautiful old tree, right?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you-”

“Well you kinda did.” Neil sits up, pushes his hair back with his palm. “I know you really meant it. You seem like the kinda person who does try to see beauty in unconventional things.”

Richard tilts his head in a way that says, well, yeah.

“But this shit hurts,” Neil tells him, holding the hands up. “It gets worse over time and soon I won’t be able to do my job anymore. I won’t be able to do shit.”

“Oh.” Richard shifts in his seat. “You work with your hands?”

“I cut hair.”

In the street, they can hear people yelling, mostly men, mostly in low guttural voices. A car honks and holds out one long, painful note as it drives by unblocked by anything. A car in another lane honks back, in a short, rat-a-tat-tat manner. In the storeroom beside all the room temperature bottles and packages of toilet paper, Michelle can hear similar chaos coming from the alley.

Richard’s face crinkles and he looks out the window. A girl wearing a necklace of crimson beads and big brown Buckeyes staggers past. A friend shrieks after her.

“Does this mean we lost, or won?” Richard asks. “I’ve been trying to pick up on the signals but I can’t figure it out yet.”

Neil smiles and rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m not gonna say we. I go to the community college at the moment.”

“Sorry. I mean, that’s smart. OSU’s tuition just keeps shooting up-”

Neil makes a farty sound with his mouth. “Yeah, don’t worry, I’m over it. My advisor’s office has a fish tank in the wall. I’m not crying over my pathetic cheap education, believe me.”

Michelle comes out and returns to the bar, avoiding their glances. She wipes the bar with a rag and watches the door.

“But if you’re wondering whether ‘we’ beat Michigan or not,” Neil continues, “you can’t really tell until somebody sets something on fire.”

“And that would be…”

“A loss. If shit gets burned, we probably lost. Also, you could just look at the TV.”

The bar-side door swings and a middle aged, balding white guy steps in. He’s clad in an OSU windbreaker and khakis. Most of the bar is disinterested but Michelle stands up straighter snd says hello.

The woman with the Kate Bush eyeshadow stands up, throws her arms open and says “Tommy Senior! There he is!” in a babyish voice.

The man hugs her. “What I miss?”

“It’s not going so good,” she says.

He squints at the TV and, seeing that it’s not in high definition, demands to know why she chose such a “dumpy place”.

“Hello sir,” Michelle interrupts. “What can I get you?”

“A Guinness. Seriously Nance why don’t we go to that sports bar across the street?”

She points at her sweatshirt. “I got wine on my blouse.”

A young man comes in, followed by four of his equally large, doughy friends. The first one appears to be this couple’s son. They gather in front of the bar on their feet, talking loudly and blocking the way to the bathroom.

“Fucking Meyer. What an idiot.”

“He’s no Tressel.”

“Yeah, good fucking thing. He’s not such a puss about running the ball.”

“At least he commanded respect. That was a cool dude.”

“A corrupt motherfucker, you mean.”

“Boys,” the woman whines, “Language.”

“Jesus,” Richard mutters to Neil. “There goes the neighborhood.”

“The problem is,” the older man butts in, “these players don’t have any discipline. They all want to live like rap stars or something, just money and bit-”

“Dad, come on.”

“I’m serious! They never have to go to class, they get all this money under the table, free tattoos to make them look like human garbage-”

“Tommy!” the woman says in a stagey whisper. “1You’re being rude.”

“What because it’s not PC? I can’t say tattoos make you look like a prison inmate and will ruin your chances of getting a job after you’re done with footb-”

“Hi there,” Michelle says. “Can I get you all drinks? Cash only, by the way.”

There is some tittering as the young men check their pockets. One complains loudly that if Slosh can’t afford to take credit cards, it can’t afford his business. The son drinks from his mom’s Bud Light and points out an ATM in the laundromat side, which Michelle has already mentioned, but been ignored about.

Two of the young guys walk through the bar toward it. Neil looks out the window and Richard peers down into his book. Outside the passers-by have thickened into a throng. A party bus chugs down the street on the way to Ledo’s Pub.

The two guys pass into the laundromat’s bright lights and begin to mutter and chuckle. Richard and Michelle stiffen. Neil keeps staring out the window. When the two men pass back into the dark they are complaining about ATM fees.

“Hey dude,” one of them says to Neil. “Where’s the Halloween party?”

Neil flashes a toothy false smile and sips his empty drink.

“Fellas!” Michelle calls. “Got your pitcher right here.”

The one who didn’t speak lingers a moment. Richard stares at him.

“You guys watch the game?” His words are slurred and wet.

Richard shakes his head. “No, was it good?”

The guy seems amused and perplexed, like he’s seeing a dog talk. He’s wearing a grey cap with Brutus Buckeye on it, who seems oddly cute and nonthreatening for this context. He’s blonde and tall, with a thin neck. Michelle walks to the end of the bar and watches him.

“You should give it a fucking try for once,” he tells Neil and Richard. “You know, act like you’re part of this community.”

And then he walks away, to meld back into the crowd he came with.

Evening falls and the bar fills up with the overflow of Buckeyes fans who cannot cram into more conventional spots. They hold streaked glasses of draft beer and clog up the walk ways. Richard walks through the laundromat, out the door, and into the alley to pee.

While he’s gone, Michelle sends a text to ask Neil if he’s okay. Does he need an Uber home? Is there anything she can do? He does not answer. He thumbs through Richard’s book. It is all about the humanity of non-human animals and how all lives are worthy of respect. He wonders if Richard has been judging Neil for the fact that he wears leather. He wonders whose life would be most respected by the current patrons of the bar: a gorilla’s, his own, or that of a die-hard Michigan fan.

Richard returns and puts his hand, very gently, on Neil’s leather-covered wrist. He has a pitcher in the other hand, pressed against his chest.

“I think we both have laundry to fold,” he says.

There are a few people sitting in the molded plastic laundromat chairs, drinking and laughing like horses. Mostly women with streaked blonde hair and fuzzy jackets. Neil sits on the washing machine while Richard withdraws his warm, black clothing and goes about folding it.

“Isn’t your laundry done?”

Neil nods. He teeters a bit, pleasantly drunk and flushed. “My paws are too shit,” he says.

“I’m sorry. I can fold your stuff for you.”

“I don’t want you touching my, like, panties and shit.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do.”

“Okay.” Richard takes off his shirt and puts on a thinner, charcoal tee. The room is warm from all the bright lights, bustling machines, and bodies.

“Yeahhh bitch!” A drunk white woman calls. “Take it off!”

“So,” Neil interrupts. “What do you think of the book you’re reading?”

“Peter Singer?” Richard ask. “He’s alright. He’s all about animal rights in this really…unyielding way, you know? Like, he’s great, I think otters and macaques are practically people too, you know, but I don’t like how white people use his work to like, justify caring about dead lions more than dead black people.”

Neil stares at him, nodding slowly. “Yeah…’s fucked up.”

Richard tosses a square of black jeans into his basket.

“It’s like..,” Neil fumbles, “My mom loves dogs. She has this dog shelter out by Marion, where I’m from? Loves dogs. Cries about dogs when they’re hurt or they die. She never cried about me being hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, fuck her.” His eyes go wide. “I mean, I respect her basic humanity or whatever but, shit.”

A young Asian woman runs in holding a sweatshirt covered in vomit, not hers. The two of them watch as she prepares the washing machine with stunning efficiency.

“And fuck this town, honestly.”

They laugh. It must be too rich a laugh, too comfortable, because that moment the older balding man, Tom Senior, walks into the laundromat side. They hush up. He walks past them, ramrod, with the air of a pissed-off high school principal.

Neither of them can be stoic anymore. The laundromat is warm and bright, their faces are numb with drink, their bellies gurgling with froth and alcohol. This man’s discomfort is primordial, pathetic. Neil giggles a little into his hand, still giddy from something, he’s not sure what.

Tom Senior stops and surveys them. “Do you gentlemen live here or something?”

Richard’s pulse quickens but it’s Neil who jumps in. “Actually, my husband and I own this place? Welcome to our home.”

His hand is clammy and bony on Richard’s shoulder.

Tom Senior chuckles, his mustache rustling with the movement of his lips. He seems like the kind of drunk who doesn’t show how blotto he is until someone provokes him. He’s too much of an expert at drinking to get silly or visibly emotional. But both Richard and Neil know how to watch men for signs of nascent violence.

“Funny,” he says. “You fellas think I’m some kind of bigot, don’t you? You think you can look at me and say oh, he’s some doddering old white motherfucker who hates queers. Who’s the real bigot in this scenario huh? You don’t know a thing about me.”

Their only reaction is the suppression of an eye roll.

“I’m just trying to have a beer with my family and not have some freaks in fetish gear make my wife uncomfortable. You guys, I don’t care who you fuck, this is about public decency, okay? There’s young people in here.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Young baby eighteen year olds scrubbing come off their pajamas. Give me a break.”

Tom steps forward. “Excuse me?”

Michelle appears out of nowhere, standing tall with her arms swinging as she walks. Folks in the bar side complain as she leaves them alone and beerless. She doesn’t care. She nearly presses her body into Tom’s chest.

“Hey, do we have a problem?”

“I don’t think so,” Tom Senior says. His son, presumably Tom Junior, stands at the side. He looks more confused than pissed.

“We’re fine, Michelle,” Neil says. His words are measured, irritated.

“Oh,” Tom Junior says, “Do you folks know each other? Is that what this is about?”

“She’s not my mother,” Neil says. “Michelle, you’re escalating this. Just go.”

She looks back at her friend, who has not risen from his perch on the dryer. His hair is longer than its ever been. He can’t waste energy cutting it himself. He gets faint after too long on his feet. He has got to be overheated in that jacket but he doesn’t feel safe in just the slip. She wants to protect him. Needs to. But this isn’t her story. And it’s not a simple story about violence solving hate.

Richard is the one to notice this, and to take Michelle back into the cramped bar. He whispers to her, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” and mentions he used to mix drinks at a dive in the Bronx. He can help her. The crowd of thirsty patrons swarms them the whole way back behind the bar. She sips water and picks at eye goobers in the mirror while Richard fills glasses.

In the laundromat, a dryer bleats. Tom Senior throws the door open and retrieves his wife’s blouse while Junior averts his eyes. He stops by Neil again on the way out, whose gaze is lost in the book.

“I’m a curious guy,” Tom Senior says. “I like to watch people. I don’t think that makes me intolerant. I guess I come across as an asshole to new-age sensitive guys like you and your little boyfriend.”

Neil is not much of a guy, really, but he lets the word slide. It’s a mistake even Michelle makes. He looks at Tom impassively, worming his tongue around in his mouth, trying to moisten it. Stress dries him out.

“Humor my curiosity,” the older man says, his son sighing with mortification, his son’s friends trickling in to survey the scene. “What are you anyway? Are you a drag queen kind of person or are you the woman in the relationship?”

“Dad.”

The blonde dude is laughing.

“Am I supposed to look at you and see a woman or am I supposed to look at you and see both, or am I supposed to just pretend you don’t exist? I know I’m not supposed to ask. But I’m also supposed to know, to intuit somehow, what you are and what I’m supposed to call you, so, how the hell does that work?”

Neil’s hands hurt so badly his body has begun to numb it out. He can feel a fever rising in his body. This happens after a long day, now. Tylenol won’t cut the fever or the hurt. He can’t close the book before him even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t.

“Dad,” the son says. “Who cares. Just let it go.”

“Listen, young man,” Tom says. “I work for the school’s administration, and I have to go to all these meetings. Diversity this, respect that, what words are okay always changes, and Christ, all the changing makes it hard. I can’t do my job without stumbling into some damn protest or letter or glitter thing getting thrown.”

Neil shrugs. “You get paid to go to those meetings and listen, right?”

“I can’t get lick of work done! My wife, there’s this lazy woman in her department who doesn’t do shit, and we can’t fire her because it wouldn’t be PC!”

“Dad.”

In the distance, a glass breaks. Somebody yells Muck Fichigan. The crowd is getting rowdy, they can all see it in how the bodies are moving, can hear it in the rapid patter of everyone’s speech. Tom’s wife has stumbled out of it, looking impatient.

“We should go,” she whispers to her son. Punches might get thrown soon. The night is young.

“Just tell me,” Tom Senior says, angry in a contained way. “You look ridiculous but I’m supposed to be okay with students, with adult men, meeting with me in my office? Dressed like you? You think the world is going to respect you all dolled up like that?”

“Tom.”

“Dad.”

“I’m serious!” He tells them. “It’s a serious question! I just want to understand why you do this business with the clothes and the glitter and trying to make it seem so deadly serious! I just want to know.”

They all hear a muted thud. Men holler and the crowd in the bar sways. Michelle is yelling for people to get out, while a few on the periphery slip out of the bar and chug their drinks beside the detergent dispenser. Neil hearts the groaning of wood and then Richard’s voice telling people to clear the area. He imagines Richard jumping over the bar and running to whomever’s been injured, somebody who truly needs help.

Neil looks up from the book and smiles at Tom Senior. It’s a beatific kind of smile, pitying as if from some great above. His head is swimming with pain, drink, and heat, and he’s utterly exhausted, to accustomed to care. This man won’t get an answer from him, not one single sincere response.

The doors are swinging open, cold air is rushing in. A siren wails, perhaps fated for Slosh. Tom Senior’s wife is tugging at his elbow, and then they are all going, confused, into the street. They leave knowing no more than they did as they entered, though Neil feels better than before.

The violence abates quickly. A Michigan fan sits on the floor with a baggie of ice pressed to his head. Neil is not thankful for the violence but he radiates blissful calm in its quiet, silted aftermath. He does not turn to watch how it plays out. He looks down and reads the book.