The Literary Girlfriend: An Awkward Moment with Women’s Underwear

The situation would have been less awkward if she had left socks in the dryer instead of these. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sharing an apartment laundry room dryer with a hot chick in a clingy t-shirt was uncharted territory for me.  I didn’t know the etiquette.  I figured it was polite for me to wait for the hot chick to get her clothes out first, but women in this complex were notorious for letting their clothes sit for hours after the dryer had finished, and I didn’t want to wait around like a doofus for my own clothes in a dryer cycle that I had paid for.

Within a few minutes of lying down on my couch in my own apartment, I reached a decision.  The dryer cycle went 40 minutes.   I would return to the laundry room in 45 minutes.  That would give the hot chick in a clingy t-shirt fair opportunity to retrieve her clothes first.  If she hadn’t, then that was her fault, and I couldn’t be blamed for sifting (in an emotionally detached manner) through her garments.

When I returned to the apartment laundry room 45 minutes later as planned, the dryer was still rolling, and a large mother with a couple kids coloring the floor with crayons was giving me the evil eye.  I felt the dryer door, and it was warm.  The hot chick must have put quarters in for a second run.  I reluctantly opened the dryer door because I really didn’t want to sift through the hot chick’s clothes, especially in front of witnesses, but I had no choice.

I pulled out a couple items slowly.  They were both mine.  Relieved, I peeked my head in, and sure enough, all the clothes seemed to be mine.  The hot chick had already retrieved her clothes.

As far as I knew, the awkward moment was over!

I pulled out all my hot clothes and dropped them into my basket.  As I ambled away, the mother quickly stuffed her clothes in, ready to milk about 30 minutes of free dryer cycle courtesy of me and the hot chick.  She didn’t say thank you, and I didn’t care.  My head hurt, my nose was runny, and I tried to keep my coughs from infecting my clean clothes.  All I cared about was getting back to my apartment and sleeping the rest of the day.

The next morning, I grabbed what I needed from the basket, ironed what was wrinkled, and went to work.  The following day was a Saturday, so I left the laundry basket alone (I had clean casual clothes, alright?).  It was Sunday when I decided to hang everything up, and that’s when I saw them.

They were just sitting at the bottom of my laundry basket, like the three tiniest jelly beans that manage to find their way to the bottom of a candy jar. There were three of them, one white, one black, and one red. The hot chick had accidentally left her underwear with my clothes.

I picked up the undergarments (delicately and with the utmost respect) with the intention of returning them to the laundry room.  I would just put them on the dryer, and when the hot chick noticed that she was missing them, the female clothing would be there.

Except…  she probably had noticed that three days ago.  Aaaarrrgh!  I threw the tiny shreds of clothing onto my couch in frustration.  The hot chick probably thought I had kept her underwear on purpose.  She probably thought I was some weirdo fantasizing with her underwear!

I couldn’t even return the undergarments to the laundry room now.  The hot chick would have given up on them.  And if I placed them back on top of the dryer, the underwear would likely end up in the hands of some other weirdo, one who would do the things that the hot chick probably thought I was doing with them now.

I was determined to return the hot chick’s clothes.  It was a matter of pride.  I couldn’t have her thinking I was the kind of guy who would intentionally keep her undergarments.

I’d have to keep an eye out for the hot chick.  I didn’t know where she lived, what hours she worked, or when she usually did her laundry.  The apartment complex was spread out over almost an entire block, with several laundry rooms and parking lots and even a couple swimming pools.  The hot chick could be anywhere.

So for about three weeks I was on the look- out.

During that few weeks, some other stuff happened.  Football season started, so I spent Saturdays and Sundays hanging out at sports bars or at friends’ houses/apartments.  I went on one disastrous date (short version is that she was a friend of a co-worker, and since the co-worker’s friend read a lot of books the co-worker thought we’d get along, and it should have had potential because the woman was pale with long straight hair and big glasses, but I during a conversation I confused Hamlet with Macbeth, and after a cross-examination, the woman figured out that I was an intellectual/literary pretender).  My best friend proposed to his girlfriend, and she said yes, so I was going to be a best man in a wedding in a different state.

The point is that the hot chick’s underwear wasn’t the top priority in my life, but I was still looking for the hot chick in a clingy t-shirt, just in case.

Eventually, I saw her again.  And of course, it led to an awkward moment.

*****

To be continued in The Literary Girlfriend: The Uncomfortable Conversation with the return of the soon-to-be-named hot chick.