At the Laundromat

The small, cinder-block-wall room was dimly lit despite being early afternoon. The single window was covered by a flimsy curtain, but four feet out from the window was another cinder-block wall, so there wasn’t much light coming in. The room had space for not much more than a single bed, a nightstand and straight-backed chair, and a leaning particle-board wardrobe. It wasn’t meant to be a bedroom.

Bryan sat on the side of the bed, leaning back on his elbows, legs splayed, jeans unzipped and flared. He was smoking a cigarette and murmuring encouragement and making sounds that he knew the older man, George, wanted to hear. George was on his knees between Bryan’s thighs, blowing the handsome, sultry younger man’s cock. Bryan palmed the man’s balding head with his free hand, helping the rhythm of its rise and fall and, as he came closer to coming, he crushed his cigarette out in a molded plastic ashtray on the bed next to him, used both hands to guide George’s bobbing head, and began moving his hips, making George gag on deepthroating him.

Tightening the grip of his fingers running into the fringe of hair rimming George’s skull, Bryan muttered, “Now. Gonna come, man,” pulled George’s head off his cock and ejaculated on the man’s cheeks. George sat back on his haunches and licked his face off.

“Come on up onto the bed now,” Bryan said. “Take off your jeans and your briefs. Fold them nice now. And stretch yourself out. Your turn.”

George folded his jeans and placed them in the seat of the straight-backed chair. His briefs were draped over the back of the chair. The main thing George remembered from before was that Bryan was a neat nut. With a sigh of anticipation, he sat down next to Bryan on the bed, lifted his right leg around Bryan’s butt, and laid his left leg across Bryan’s lap. The younger man started to hum and George to pant and moan, as Bryan took the older man’s erection in his hand and began to pump him.

“The money,” Bryan said.

“It’s there on the nightstand,” George said, pointing to the three folded twenties.

* * * *

“Why is it that the washers are all idle, with clothes in them, every time I come in here?” Christopher said. “Anyone?” he called out to the room at large. “Anybody? Are these your clothes?”

“Anyone” didn’t answer. Neither did “anybody.” Heads did pop up among the two aisles in the big room, each bounded by lines of commercial washing machines alternating with dryers. Surprisingly, as would be noted by regular users of commercial laundromats, several of the heads were those of men. It was unusual to see such a large proportion of men to women in the laundromat, especially now, late in the afternoon, rather than the evening, when working bachelors came in.

“Anyone?” Christopher asked again, in a more plaintive, yet unheeded voice. Not having gotten a rise out of anyone, the twenty-five-year old, somewhat effeminate bleach-blond pub barista, Christopher, pulled the unidentified-owner clothes out of the washer at the laundromat, tossed them in the adjacent dryer, and slammed the door shut.

“I think it’s to give the washers time to chew up just one sock of a pair.”

“What?” Christopher asked, in exasperation as he shoved his own load of clothes into the now-liberated washer.

“Why the washers are all idle with clothes in them,” Mike, one of the laundromat attendants, and owner of said establishment, quipped, saddling up to the dryer and putting money in the slot to get the dryer going. Redheaded, trim, but a little thick around the middle, and dressed to appear younger and more of a player than his forty-one years and forgettable face projected, punched the “start” button on the machine. It started up with a rumble, which moved fairly quickly into a shake, rattle, and roll. “Whoa,” Mike said. “I forgot that this was the defective dryer we’re replacing today.”

“Ha, ha,” Christopher managed. “So, you fed the dryer because these are your clothes?” They were, in fact, men’s clothes that Mike had moved from the washer to the dryer.

“No,” Mike answered amicably, ever in tune with keeping customers from chewing up the wallpaper. “These are Josh’s. He’ll pay me back when he returns for them. We’re a full-service laundromat, you know. And Josh’s a regular. He’s good for the coins.”

Christopher laughed at that, a better rendition of a laugh than he’d given for the sock joke. “Some laundromat. Never has a washer available when you come to it. And, God, this dryer is ready to take off from the floor. Isn’t there any way to turn it off?”

“Not once it’s gotten going, no. Trying to pull the plug might get you electrocuted. It’s being replaced today. So, if our service is that bad, why do you keep coming here?” Mike asked. It wasn’t asked belligerently. The two men were friends from way back and, although both gay, were both submissives, so there only was sign of tension between them when there was a man on deck they both wanted. No other men currently in the room met that bill.

Mike was a pro at dealing with people who had to take their laundry to a public facility. Christopher brought his laundry here every week—or had been doing so for the past six months. A lot of young—and not-so-young—men had been bringing their laundry here in recent months. Business had really picked up of late.

“You know why I keep coming back here,” Christopher said.

“Yes, I know,” Mike responded, with a little smile. “Like I said, we’re a full-service laundromat.”

“So, where is he today?” Christopher asked.

“What?” Mike said, motioning that he hadn’t heard Christopher over the sound of the defective dryer, which was bucking and rumbling in place.

“I asked where Bryan was today,” Christopher yelled over the noise from the dryer. Other patrons in the laundromat, women and men alike, heard him and looked up. A couple of the women rolled their eyes and sniggered before returning to dealing with their own wash or sitting and gossiping in the chairs at the front window while they waited for the cleansing magic being dealt by the washers and dryers.

“In the back,” Mike said, “doing what he does best.”

Christopher didn’t have to ask what that was. It was why he kept coming back to this laundromat. He just didn’t fully believe until Mike was so open about it that Mike realized why business had picked up at his laundromat in the last six months—the six months since Mike’s cousin, Bryan, had come on board to help Mike run the place.

“Well, I hope he doesn’t wear himself out doing it,” Christopher said.

“I bet you do,” Mike answered. Both men laughed.

Mike wafted off to help others in the laundromat, and Christopher retreated to the window seats with his copy of a racy GM paperback, Gaylords Inn, and fidgeted, looking occasionally, and impatiently, toward the rear of the establishment. The rattling of the dryer half way between him and the back stopped eventually. He watched an appliance store truck pull up into the handicapped space outside, two men, one middle aged and burly and the other young and somewhat boyish, come out of the cab, and the back of the truck being opened up. A commercial-grade dryer sat just inside the truck.

Christopher was engaged in watching the men lower the back gate of the truck to pull the dryer down onto a dolly, so he missed Josh coming into the front area, discovering, with a frown, that his clothes weren’t in the washer, and being approached by Mike, who explained they were in the adjacent dryer. When Christopher turned his attention back to the interior of the laundromat as the two servicemen started maneuvering the new dryer through the front door, he saw Mike and Josh in conversation, but, beyond that, he saw that Bryan had emerged from the back. He readjusted himself into what he believed was one of his sexier poses and slapped on a coquettish smile.

God, he’s gorgeous, Christopher thought—thinking of him in a James Dean way, even though James Dean was much too before his time for him to realize it. Bryan stood there, leaning into the frame of the wide doorway leading to the back, first through a smaller room with kitchen facilities, a table and six chairs, and a few machines in it and then into a hallway with the ladies’ room and the manager’s office to the left and the rarely used men’s room and the room where Bryan now lived to the right. The men’s room had a shower, so, with the kitchenette in the room between the main area and the office, Bryan was able to exist as the laundromat’s live-in caretaker.

Bryan was the epitome of tall, dark, muscular, and handsome, with wavy hair, a shiny-toothed smile, arresting blue eyes, and a loose-fitting chambray shirt, showing tattoos on his upper arms, and low-rise worn jeans. To a man like Josh—indeed to nearly all of the men now coming to the laundromat—he was the very, very good bad boy.

Christopher watched Bryan come out of his oh-so-sexy slouch against the doorframe and come forward into the main area as the two servicemen muscled the new dryer down the side aisle where Mike and Josh were standing. Bryan got to the men first, and Christopher gave a little scowl as he saw Bryan pat Josh on the hip and Josh simper at the touch. Bryan’s eyes, though, were on the deliverymen as they muscled the dryer into the laundromat and, specifically, on the younger of the two men.

Mike called out to the deliver guys, “That machine goes here, where this dryer is. You can take this dryer away, please. I paid the disposal fee.”

“No, don’t,” Bryan said in a deep, melodic baritone that had Christopher and every other man—and some of the women too—in the place nearly swoon. “Don’t take the old dryer. It still works. There’s an empty slot back in the kitchen. You can move the old dryer back there. Here, I’ll help this guy move it and you can do the paperwork with the older guy.”

As Bryan and the younger delivery guy put the older dryer on the dolly and trundled it off toward the back room, Mike followed them with his eyes. He frowned, but he didn’t contradict Bryan. He just signed off on the delivery papers and helped Josh move his hamper of now-dry clothes to the other aisle and to a folding table. The older delivery guy worked on putting the new dryer in place and hooking it up. As Bryan and the younger delivery guy came back and the young guy crouched down to help his mater, Bryan walked on up to the front of the room, to the chairs lining the front window. Every man’s eye in the place—and some of the woman’s attention, as well—followed him.

“Hey, there, Christopher. Nice to see you.”

“Hello, Bryan,” Christopher said in the sweetest flirty tones he could manage. “I hoped you’d be here.”

“I’m always here for you, baby,” Bryan said. “You want to come on back?”

When the next patron came into the laundromat with her clothes, she stopped at the now-idle washer with Christopher’s clothes in it. “Why is it that the washers are all idle with clothes in them every time I come in here?” She asked of the room in general.

As Mike came over to assist the woman in finding an empty washer, he said, “I think it’s to give the washers time to chew up just one sock of a pair.”

“Heard that one before,” the woman said. “About a million times—but oh so true.”

They both laughed, as Mike pulled Christopher’s clothes out of the washer and put them in an adjacent dryer.

* * * *

“That’s a nice shirt you have on today, baby,” Bryan said, as he ushered Christopher into his room. “You can leave the money there on the nightstand. Let’s get that shirt off so it doesn’t get wrinkled.” He fingered the buttons running down the front of the shirt. “Here, come here and sit on the side of the bed with me. Sorry that I don’t have two chairs in here. I’ll have to get another one, I guess.”

“Was that Josh I saw coming out of here earlier?” Christopher asked, looking at the top of the nightstand to see that it already had two folded wads of bills laying there. He didn’t want to push the issue, though, so he sat on the side of the bed, and when Bryan sat down right beside him and put one arm around his waist, palming his hip, and turned his face to him with the other hand holding his chin, he melted into Bryan’s embrace and let Bryan kiss him on the lips. The hand left his chin and cupped Christopher’s basket. Lost to Bryan’s attention, Christopher moaned for him.

“It’s such a nice shirt that we wouldn’t want to muss it up,” Bryan said. “And we want to be free of it, don’t we? We wanted to be naked.” Christopher shuddered in pleasure and anticipation.

Bryan finished unbuttoning Christopher’s shirt while they went back to kissing. Christopher didn’t object to the garment being unbuttoned and pulled off his back. Christopher twisted momentarily and carefully draped the shirt over the arm of the chair by the bed. He worked in a laundromat. He understood how to keep clothes as wrinkle free as possible. All of the men who came here—who had started coming here in the six months since he’d been working here because he was working here and running his own business in the back room of the laundromat—appreciated that in him. Some of them probably even told themselves that was why they were attracted to him. He was so neat and attentive. They probably wouldn’t have admitted that it was because of what they touched when, like now, Bryan had unzipped his jeans, taken Christopher’s hand, and moved it inside his fly.

“You can release it,” Bryan whispered. Trembling, Christopher worked Bryan’s belt undone, his jeans unbuttoned and flared, the waistband of his briefs under Bryan’s balls, and the thick, long erection free. Bryan pressed on Christopher’s shoulders, and Christopher went down on his knees and took Bryan’s cock in his mouth. Bryan leaned back onto the bed on his elbows for a few minutes, arching his head back, and enjoying Christopher’s mouth work with his cock. After a few moments, Bryan raised his torso and leaned over Christopher’s back while Christopher was doing what he could to deepthroat the other man. Bryan ran his hands down Christopher’s bare back and then to and under the waistband of Christopher’s jeans and briefs. He pushed the clothes to blow Christopher’s buttocks, ran both hands down the man’s crack and, finding Christopher’s hole, entered him with the index fingers of both hands and started spreading the hole. Christopher moaned for him but kept sucking.

“Let’s get these jeans off you,” Bryan murmured. “Stand.”

When Christopher was standing before him, Bryan deftly unfastened and eased Christopher’s jeans and briefs off the man’s hips and took Christopher’s cock in his mouth. The garments were eased off Christopher’s legs as Bryan worked his cock and carefully hung it over the back of the chair.

They were lying on the narrow bed, both naked, Christopher on his back, his legs spread and bent, feet flat on the mattress. Bryan was hovering over him, crouching on his knees between the man’s spread thighs, one arm under Christopher’s torso, holding him to the bed, and the fingers of the other hand probing Christopher’s passage, opening him up and rubbing his prostrate with the tip of a finger. Christopher began to tremble and his body shimmered, quaking in Bryan’s strong grip. He was completely under the male whore’s control—just as he wanted to be. He was giving little yipping sounds as Bryan feasted on his nipples and his fingers played inside him, three fingers inside him now, lifting Christopher’s pelvis to a position they both knew would serve as a good angle for entry and full possession.

“Yes, yes, Christopher murmured. Do it. Fuck me.”

“Soon, baby, soon,” Bryan murmured. He was already on the move, though, moving the hand under Christopher to his tailbone and lifting his pelvis further, using the fingers inside him to tease Christopher ever more open to him. Bryan possessed Christopher’s mouth with a deep kiss and then moved his tongue and teeth down the man’s throat and down once again to his nipples. Bryan bit Christopher’s right nipple and the man yelped. Bryan let loose immediately, though, and inhaled the nipple into his mouth. He began vigorously finger fucking Christopher’s hole.

“Shit, yes!” Christopher cried out. “Yes, oh God, yes. Do it. Cover me! Fuck me!”

So, Bryan did, rising over Christopher, positioning himself, thick and long, throbbing. As Bryan positioned himself, Christopher turned his head toward the chair, for the first time focusing on the clothes Bryan had draped there. The briefs he saw were Gregg Homme navy-blue pouch briefs. These weren’t his. He wore black Joe Snyder bikini briefs. Then he saw those too, the two briefs draped side by side over the back of the chair. Navy-blue and black briefs. Where had Christopher seen Gregg Homme navy-blue pouch briefs before? Recently? In Josh’s wash when Christopher had moved Josh’s clothes from the washer to the dryer out in the Laundromat room.

Christopher had a nanosecond of anger, followed by a second of realization that he shouldn’t be under any illusions. He’d known Bryan would fuck anything that moved for money—and did. He was just lucky that . . .

And then Christopher gasped and cried out as Bryan entered him and entered him and entered him, diving deep with a thick throbbing shaft, and began to pump.

Christopher’s cry was loud enough to pierce the wall of Bryan’s room, travel through the men’s room, and then on, diminished but not evaporated, through the wall into the main laundromat room to the folding table abutting the wall.

“Did you hear that?” asked Alexis, a middle-aged woman who had been using this laundromat for years—for years before Bryan was taken on staff here. Bryan was young enough to be her son, and there had been some time since Alexis had let any man, including her husband, mess with her. She was folding her clothes at the table. Mike was helping her.

“I heard something, yes,” Mike said. “But you know how some of these old machines squeak and groan. You should hear the rattling a dryer does that we just had replaced.”

“Don’t shit me, Mike Campbell,” Alexis said, with a snort. “You’ve been hearing those noises since your cousin started working here. You know what that noise is. I’m surprised you—”

“Nobody involved is complaining,” Mike interjected. “And you’ve been coming here for some time. Business was bad before Bryan came—bad enough that we were close to having to shut the place down. Look around. Business is very good now.”

“Well, far be it for me to want you out of business,” Alexis said with another snort. “I don’t want to have to go across town to do my laundry. It’s no skin off my nose. I know how difficult it is to work with cousins.”

No, it’s not your concern or call, Mike thought, although he just “harrumped” for Alexis’s benefit and concentrated on folding a man’s stretched-out undershirt that still had yellowed underarms despite just having been put through the wash. Don’t be too rough on Alexis, he thought. She must be married to a real pig. She’s likely out of the game and damn glad she is. And Bryan’s not my cousin, he went on to muse. That’s what we tell old biddies like you who like to tell us how to run our business—and our sex lives. He’s here for my pleasure as much as anyone else’s. I just don’t have to pay him for it and I get a percentage of what he makes.

* * * *

The laundromat was open late, but not all night. Mike and Bryan were there, closing up at 1:00 a.m. They left some of the lights on in the interior, as Mike thought that was good advertising—seeing the place somewhat lit up when you passed it in the night in a car. Neither of them worked the morning shift. Lauren would be in at 6:00 a.m. to open up. Mike would show up to take over at 3:00 p.m. Bryan would come out of his room and roam around, as he liked, when he liked. He’d roam around, checking the machines then, and flirting with whoever had come here especially for that. Their “special” patrons, most of whom had only started coming here in the past six months, took a chance on when to catch him here. As a group, they probably had the cleanest clothes in the town.

When Mike made his way to the rear of the room, on his way to the office for a last check there, he found Bryan leaning into the defective dryer, stiff armed. The dryer was just around the corner in the kitchen area off the main room—just out of sight from the main room and the glass front going all the way across the front wall of the laundromat.

“I meant to ask you why you had the delivery guys move that piece of junk here,” Mike said. “I paid for it to be scrapped. Now we—”

Bryan smiled. “You want to give me four quarters from the pouch you carry around your waist, little darlin’. I’ll show you what we can use this for.”

“I’m not wasting money just to watch this machine gyrate,” Mike said and continued on to his office.

“Suit yourself,” Bryan said to Mike’s back.

In the office, Mike waited. They often fucked in here, Bryan bending Mike over on his belly on top of the desk, and Bryan mounting and fucking him in a doggy. Mike even cleared the center of the top of the desk, hoping that Bryan would come in for such a session. But Bryan didn’t. Mike heard Bryan’s bedroom door shut and then, when Mike couldn’t think of any other reason to hang around, he rose from the desk and went over to the door and turned the lights off. He stood in the passageway at back for a few minutes in case Bryan came out of his room. But that didn’t happen, at least not while Mike was there. With a sigh, Mike went to the front, unlocked the main door, walked out of the laundromat, locked the door behind him, and went to his car.

As he walked to his car, he passed an appliance store delivery truck. If he’d looked inside, he would have seen a little guy, Todd sitting and waiting for a signal. Todd was drinking a beer to build up courage. He’d done this before, but not all that often and certainly not on a whim.

After Mike’s car pulled out of the parking lot, Bryan came out into the main room and to the front door. He flickered the lights in the room three times and unlocked the door. With a sigh, Todd, the little guy of the pair who had delivered the new dryer that afternoon, chugged his beer and exited the truck.

Letting the little guy in, Bryan guided him back to the kitchen and to the old dryer around the corner that Todd had helped him move there earlier in the day. “Gimme four quarters,” he said.

“Whatcha want quarters for?” Mike asked, tired and a bit petulant. “You didn’t tell me this would cost me anything.”

Bryan snapped his fingers. “Quarters. You wanted to know when we put this dryer here why I kept this machine. For the pleasure of it.”

Turns out it was for the pleasure of both of them. When he got the machine hopping up and down and to the side real well by feeding it quarters, Bryan grabbed Todd and pressed him, belly down, on top of the jiggling machine.

“What the hell, you fucker?” Todd, surprised, objected. But real soon he wasn’t objecting anymore. He’d come here to be fucked. Real soon he was panting and yelling. Bryan had his T-shirt and jeans and briefs off him, and the little guy was splayed out on top of that old, defective commercial dryer on his belly, with Bryan crouched over him, covering him close, one hand squeezing Todd’s hip and the other on gripping the little man’s wrist and forcing Toddy’s arm painfully high on his back, and with his thick and long cock up inside the little guy’s ass, letting the machine do its thing in bouncing the two of them against each other, the machine doing more in the fuck than either one of them was doing. Bryan fucked Todd in a doggy for a while and then turned him onto his back, the dryer still bucking that a mechanical bull in a Western bar. Todd put his ankles on Bryan’s shoulders, dug his fingernails into the stud’s biceps as he held Todd’s waist tight, and held on for a rough ride.

“Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Yessss!” Todd was crying out, his hips rowing with the rhythm of Bryan’s machine-assisted thrusts.

“As good as a mechanical bull in a whore house and a lot cheaper,” Bryan yelled, thinking that, with this new feature, business at the laundromat was going to be picking up a lot when the added an after-closing hour to our schedule.

When Bryan posed this suggestion with Mike the next day and demonstrated it to Mike that night, Mike was thinking that there were times when he wondered why he let Bryan stay around the laundromat. This wasn’t one of those times.