The Boobie Dry Cleaner

The way she leaned against the counter, it pushed her boobs into display even more. That’s the thing I never liked about going into that dry cleaner, was this young woman behind the counter. She was pretty enough, but she shoved her big ol hooters up and out of her shirt on display. I wonder if she ever had the chance to know what eye contact looked like.


I went to that dry cleaner every other week while I had the dive shop. It was on the way, and was the last one nearby that I hadn’t yet boycotted for some ridiculous reason. I did that a lot back then. I had a mental list of the dry cleaners I didn’t want to ever set foot in again, and now I cannot remember the reason for any of them. Over the time I’d been going to the “Boobie Dry Cleaner,” as I’d begun calling it, I became friendly with Kayla, the one with the boobs.

I went in one night on my way home from the shop. Kayla didn’t smile. Her boobs stood at attention, but she didn’t smile like she usually did.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked.

“My boyfriend and I just broke up,” she sighed.

“Oh no! How long have you been together?” I asked. She told me it had been a few weeks. I tried to smile sympathetically, but couldn’t seem to muster one up for a 20 year old girl who had broken up with her weeks-long boyfriend.

She went on to tell me that she had such a great time with him. He was older; I gathered that he was at least in his thirties or maybe forties. He took her to all the “right” clubs. He bought her jewelry. And now she’d need to find another guy to do all those things for her. It was catastrophic.

I couldn’t resist. I asked her why she needed all that in her life. What was so great about going to the “right” clubs if she couldn’t get along with the guy who brought her there? She looked at me with a puzzled look on her face.

“The way I see it,” I paused to choose my words carefully. “If you really like a guy then it doesn’t matter where you guys go together. No matter where you go, it will always be fun.”

She considered for a moment while I told her about the dates that Todd and I had been on when we were first together. He was 20, I was 23. We were flat broke and our idea of a date was cooking dinner together in my apartment. There was a supermarket a few blocks away. We’d walk there and spend Saturday afternoon wandering the aisles, picking out the ingredients and laughing. He really knew how to make me laugh, too. I have a very vivid memory of him speaking French to a cantaloupe. I have no idea what he said to it, but it was funny as hell as he tapped the top of it and held it to his ear. It’s those memories that make me smile still, 13 years later.

Kayla raised her eyebrows at me incredulously. “And you married him after that?”