My drycleaner hit on me. My drycleaner is an old Asian man. He has no front teeth and hair coming out of his ears. He likes to eat smelly food. My drycleaner said I looked very “fresh” and very “pretty”. I was on my way to the gym. I was wearing the same Nike shirt that I wore to the gym yesterday. I was anything but “fresh.”

Of course it was the day I was bringing in my pants to be dry-cleaned. I couldn’t be bringing in a harmless jacket or a heavy sweater or something. No, I was bringing in my PANTS. Dammit. I had a momentary thought of grabbing my pants and hauling ass out of the store. There had to be a hundred other little Asian drycleaners in New York City. Surely, I could have found one that wouldn’t feel the need to tell me I looked “fresh.”

Now, this is where I get to blame my mother. I’m standing there and I’m singing the “kill me” song in my head, which goes like so: kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me; and I’m thinking about hauling ass, but instead thanks to years of programming, I have this stupid response mechanism which involves my being nice and polite following a compliment. So I ended up smiling and saying “thank you” to the dry cleaning guy.

Holy shit that was dumb.

My ninety year old drycleaner winked at me!

I mean he’s so old that I would have thought the wink would have resulted in his eyelid shearing off at the source. But no, there it was: open, closed, open.

I nearly screamed.

In retrospect, it is unfortunate that his eyelid didn’t fall off- it would have been a good distraction from the awkward silence that followed…

So yeah, now I have to go purchase an economy size can of mace and a big old baseball bat before I pick up my dry-cleaning. I have to admit though, I’m thinking about just abandoning my pants. I’m not sure that I want them back anyway- they feel dirty…