The Wash | 23 September 2021
Washing clothes. Washing dishes. I thought it was gonna be a washing day when I dressed in the clothes discarded by my bed the previous night. Had I known the doorbell would change my plans so dramatically, I definitely would have shaved my legs.
BNR Response
My head was bent over the sink so I could wash a week’s worth of glitter off of me and brush my teeth when the doorbell rang for a second time. I had had so much cumulatively to drink over the past several days that the opening scene from Butterfield-8 allowed me to momentarily entertain a glug of whisky to rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth. Through my hangover, I’d dismissed the first ring as either imaginary or another exercise in torture, much like that of the neighbor who’d decided to mow at 7 fucking AM this morning. Coming to the realization that the doorbell was real and not post-festival tinnitus, I stumbled, hand towel drying my scrubbed-red face, to my foyer.
Tripping over a drunkenly discarded high heel as I opened the door, I quickly pivoted from expletive to greeting, “CHRISSSSSST-hiiiiiiii!”
“Uh, hi. I’m your neighbor down a few blocks.” The confident stranger was having trouble finding words, no doubt due to my disheveled appearance and maybe my smell. “I live on the corner of Miramar in the house with the red mailbox…?” The handsome stranger paused for recognition that my foggy, now humiliated, brain could not deliver. “Anyway!” The charming stranger smiled largely, “I think your dog must have gotten out – the golden? – because he was in my yard. I had him by the collar for a moment and caught your address on his tag, but then he slipped out of it and headed back down this way. He’s pretty fast and he’s a ways ahead of us, but I think we have a good chance of catching him if we move quickly.”
The helpful stranger handed me the collar as I reached for my keys and the leash I kept by the door. “Ummm, you might want shoes?” The disarming stranger said, squinting his eyes as if trying not to deepen my embarrassment. I looked down and found that my feet were DISGUSTING and realized that, no, I had not put on shoes before heading out the door, so I ducked back inside and returned in flip flops.
As we headed down the hill in the direction of the beach, I learned more about this flirtatious stranger. No, neighbor. His name was Fox, and boy was he ever. Newer to town, only having been here for the past 9 months. Divorced, gainfully employed, homeowner, surfed after work and on weekends, good with mailbox paint color selection, helpful with dogs…I felt the boxes getting checked with every new player stat.
After ten minutes we were at Dunes and I was thanking the universe for this twist of fate. It could have been my lingering alcohol-fueled poor judgment, but I believed we were hitting it off.
I spotted Quint getting attention at Ebb Tide Café right across from the beach, and he came running at my first call. He was a good boy. He was a good boy who had clearly spent time in the waves before heading to the café for pettings, and he needed desperately to be hosed off. I put his collar and leash on, tightening the collar by one more notch, and the three of us headed home. The odd, nostalgic sensation of being a family or a unit or a something washed over me: walking on my street with dog and man in tow. I hadn’t felt this way since long before my two-year-old divorce from Fuckwit.
Ronnie and Babette, a couple who lived across the way, passed us, and we stopped to chat for a moment – none of us acknowledging the question of how Fox, Quint, and I were connected. Fox and I caught each other’s eyes during this exchange in that fresh, exciting, almost scary energy of a secret or of something new. Fox reached for and grabbed my hand and I was feeling all kinds of swell until Babette’s urgent-eyed non-verbal queue directed my attention to my chest. I gazed down, head in the clouds, and quickly realized that I hadn’t fully buttoned my peasant dress and my left breast had emerged, unabashedly, from the sheer cotton and was on full display. Jesus, I was a mess!
We laughed and parted ways and I explained to handsome Fox about Burning Man, arriving home early this morning after hitching a ride in the back of Kaiser’s Airstream, and being so proud of myself for having started the laundry and dishes despite my shampoo-effect-esque condition.
We arrived back at my house and Fox easily followed me to the back of the bungalow to help wash the sand and brine off of Quint. We laughed through the inevitable dog-washing montage: getting splashed, chasing around the patio, the shake-off moment, and our attempt at drying him with a too-small beach towel. Between his morning adventure and all this attention, Quint was living his best life. For a moment, I thought I might be, too.
I slide the glass patio door open, trying to think of a reason for Fox to stay, when he surprised my lips with a kiss. He pushed my obviously unwashed hair off my forehead, grabbed both of my hands and exposed my soiled palms, gave me a confident look up and down and said, “Well, Sadie, you got your laundry in the machine, dishes are in the washer, Quint’s all clean…who’s gonna wash you?” And with that, he leaned in and motioned for me to raise my arms. He slipped my dress off over my head, grazed my body as he squeezed though the patio doorway, and led me by the hand in search of the bathroom. Washing day indeed.