Keaton Complains

Keaton’s got a nice 1 bedroom apartment. At least he’s fixed it up nice with all that stuff he got at Pier 1, plus the less gayass bean bag chair, totem pole and punching bag. But he’s got some serious issues with the building.  From what I can tell, it’s run by a bunch of jerkoffs.

He says he took the apartment because he didn’t know any better when he moved to Pasadena from Fairbanks. And it’s got a great location. Keaton can walk to all the stores on South Lake, including his bank, a Trader Joe’s, a Pavilions, and, oh yeah, that Baskin Robbins I took Joyce to on Valentine’s Day. There’s a Winchells too – Keaton goes there when he gets off work and has gotten to know the dude who works the overnight shift. He reckons the two of them are the only people up at that hour in Pasadena lol.

Being able to walk to get donuts is a good thing.

The big leak in his closet last year wasn’t.

Keaton’s like me: his dad taught him a lot about houses and how to fix ‘em, but even a gay dude could have figured out the water was coming from the floor above. That’s where water comes from. But the dumbass maintenance dude in the building decided it was coming from behind the closet wall. So they took all of Keaton’s clothes to another vacant apartment so they could break through the wall—and found nothing. It took ‘em over a week to get that fixed and for Keaton to get his clothes back.

There’s been some other stupidass maintenance shit, like new windows that leak and a dishwasher that falls forward when you open the door (Keaton finally fixed that on his own.) It’s a lot more than should be going wrong in an apartment that costs—he said he didn’t want me to write how much it costs, but, trust me, it’s a lot.

Let’s just say that his rent would get you a 4 bedroom house in Maryville. A nice one. (I’m not just saying that. I checked.)

Ok, so all that sucks, but the thing that Keaton hates the most about the building is the laundry situation. He says his biggest mistake was taking an apartment that didn’t have its own washer/dryer. He had them in his apartment back in Fairbanks, and he got used to it. (He never said how they did laundry on the oil platform off the coast of Alaska where he worked for a year. Maybe they just dumped their clothes in the ocean lol.) I’ve got my own washer/dryer in my apartment, and I’m paying less than Keaton is, so I don’t blame him for being pissed off at having to go to some piece of shit laundry room anytime he wants to wash something.

The situation’s gotten worse over the past month. And it’s getting to Keaton. This is Keaton Penner – the dude who says it’s gay when you start telling him that the traffic on the 110 sucked – and he’s actually complaining about it.

What did it was when the building decided to “renovate” the laundry rooms. They started doing that at the end of January—and finished late last week. Just to change the washing machines. Last time I checked, it takes one day to change a washing machine and a dryer. They come, they connect the new machines to the existing hook-ups, and they take away the old machines. It ain’t complicated: a couple gay dudes with a dolly could manage it.

But it took Keaton’s lameass building three weeks of no working machines on his floor before they finally got the new ones.

Ok, so they finally got the new machines in. Usually they get bigger or better washing machines when they change them. Nope. Same size. But with more complicated computer controls. I’m with Meemaw when she says that all these new complicated appliances are just easier to break and harder to fix: all it takes to wash clothes is water and detergent.

At least they haven’t raised the prices on the washing machines. The new dryers are also still the same size – but they got more expensive. Ok, so maybe an extra quarter per load isn’t a lot of money, but it’s total bullshit to charge 25 cents more per load when you’re paying the kind of rent they charge in that building.

But that’s not what got Keaton madder than a polecat caught in a bear trap.

What did that was how you have to pay for the new machines.

Get ready for this: you need your phone. There’s a laundry payment app. WTF?

So what you gotta do is download the app, register, give it your credit card number, then take your phone to the laundry room, scan some stupidass code, swipe on the number of the machine you’re using—and finally the lameass machine is supposed to start washing your clothes.

I was with Keaton when he was setting this bullshit up. First problem: Keaton hates putting personal information out on the internet unless he absolutely has to. I reckon that could be because he still wants to keep a low profile after working for those drug dealers in Europe. Or maybe he just likes his privacy. Second problem: it took forever because the app kept fucking up. Third problem: once he got it set up and took his laundry to the laundry room—they hadn’t installed the machines yet.

I went over two days later after a softball game. (We kicked the Kung Pao’s asses 9-3.) We were just gonna hang out, but they finally installed the machines and Keaton had a shitload of laundry to do. He wears a black vneck to work every day, and I know how many black vnecks he owns because I sold ‘em to him. It’s not enough to get through three weeks without a washing machine—and our tshirts look like shit when you wash them in the sink and let them dry in the bathroom on a hanger.

So he got his laundry basket together. Then he realized his phone was dead because he’d forgotten to charge it before heading out to Brookside for the game. In a normal building that wouldn’t be a problem. But Keaton’s building ain’t normal.

So we had to wait for his beat-up old phone to charge. I think I’ve written about how Keaton can start growling when he gets angry. He was growling. He had a beer. It didn’t help.

So finally the phone is ready to go and we head out to the laundry room. Keaton dumps a load of darks into one of the two machines, puts in the detergent, shuts the door and takes out his phone. He brings up the app, scans, swipes and does all the other bullshit while growling. So finally he gets it all done. Nothing. His machine doesn’t start. He opens the door, shuts it again hard. Still nothing. So he gets even more pissed and slams the door of the other machine shut.

And we heard water running into in the other machine.

Keaton just lost it. Like he lost it too much to even say fuck. But he did start knocking on the laundry room wall…kinda like the way you do when you’re looking for a stud.

Then he took aim and BAM. He slammed his fist right through the drywall.

BAM. He did it a second time, leaving a hole the size of a pizza.

Then he dug his clothes out of his machine and threw them back into his basket.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

I knew he was feeling better after punching out the wall. He was saying fuck again lol.

So we went up to the third floor (where the domestic violence incident happened a couple months ago) and Keaton jammed his clothes into one of the machines up there.

He didn’t take his phone out this time. The machines have coin slots too. Like back at MT.

“You’d better have some quarters on you, bubba.”

Lucky for the wall, I did.