At the ‘mat

I finally found a laundromat that seemed less seedy than the one by my apartment. For one thing, the bathroom wasn’t permanently locked because of vandalism. And there were a lot more functioning washers and dryers. On top of that, the TV had a remote control attached so anyone could change the channel. So I started going there regularly. After some experimenting with timing, I found that early in the day or after dark were the best times to go – that’s when the fewest people were there. Because of where it was located, I wasn’t nervous about being there later in the evening. I wish now I had been.

At 9:00 one Sunday evening in November, I took three full laundry baskets to “The ‘mat” (as it was called), loaded them into washers, and got them started. Each load took a half-hour, so at 9:30 I pulled the clothes out and put them into the dryers. I figured I had plenty of time to be gone before the 11:00 closing. Just as I was loading my clothes into the dryers, a good-looking kid who was probably around twenty (I live in a college town) came in and started several loads of his own. That meant nothing to me; I’m thirty and have nothing in common with college-aged guys.

We were the only two people there at 10:15, and it appeared the place would shut down the minute we were done. But at 10:20, two guys came into the place. I quickly saw that they had no laundry and that scared the crap out of me, because I’d been robbed once before at my previous laundromat and I had a fair amount of money on me. One of them turned off the lights and stuck a “CLOSED” sign on the door as the other showed the kid and me a gun and ordered us into the restroom. We did as told, I think we both figured we’d turn over whatever money we had, they’d leave, and that would be the end of it. We were wrong, of course.

The guy with the gun ordered both of us to strip. When the kid asked, “What the fuck?” the guy with the gun said, “Do it now or you won’t walk out that door.” The kid looked at me, I guess for guidance since I was older, and I just started to take my shirt off. He followed suit and shortly we were both naked. The guy that didn’t have a gun handed each of us a safety razor; he said to shave our scrotums. Once again the kid looked at me, puzzled, but he saw me start to do as ordered and he also complied with the order. When we were done, the guy with the gun ordered the kid to bend over the toilet. The other guy proceeded to spray a sedative onto his ball sack and castrate him. He sutured the incisions shut and told the kid to stand up and move aside.

Now the guy with the gun ordered me to do the same, and in short order I was also made a eunuch. I have to say I never felt any pain during the process; they obviously had done this previously and were experts. Once done with both of us, the guy with the gun told us to get dressed and we did. We left the restroom and the pair told the kid to load his now-dry clothes into his laundry baskets. They then helped him carry them to his car. From inside the laundromat, I heard them order him to turn over the keys and get in the back seat. The three of them disappeared.

I was left with the mystery of my life. Had they targeted me for whatever reason, but found this young guy and taken him as “dessert”? Or was he their target and I just collateral damage? Or were we both random victims that they simply chanced upon, and they chose to take him with them because of his youth? I never saw any missing person reports, but have to admit I didn’t report what happened to the police. I’ll probably never know what happened to the kid. I just couldn’t admit to anyone that I’d been castrated at “The ‘mat.”