My friend Pam and The Whore

I could tell you all a bunch of stories about losing 20 pounds, getting married, having all my friends get preggers one after another and a very smelly man in Fiji named Colin. I could tell you all these stories and regale you with all the excitement my life has offered over the past few months.

But really, I’d rather tell a story about a whore and my friend Pam.

So my dear friend Pam has recently been transferred by her company back to our hometown and is currently staying at a Residence Inn while she looks for a more permanent place to live. You may, or may not know this about Residence Inns, but apparently they have a communal laundry facility that is only accessible by a room key. It’s a pretty good system, I would think, and one where you wouldn’t necessarily have to worry about leaving your clothes in the laundry room while you run upstairs to grab a few more quarters. You wouldn’t think that during this time, all the clothes you were just getting ready to wash –– the ones that just happened to be your favorite and more expensive business-type attire –– would miraculously vanish from said laundry room.

Now you have to understand, my friend Pam has been through a lot in the past few months. What with moving across the country, starting a new job and having to go through the expense of two rather expensive weddings (tee hee), she’s a little bit stressed out. So I can just imagine that when she went back down to the laundry room, quarters in hand, and saw that her favorite clothes had disappeared, she was justified in breaking down in a flurry of tears and anger, many of which were directed at the Residence Inn management. I mean, seriously-- who steals clothes out of a laundry room?

As Pam soon found out, the answer is: A whore.

Not five hours after reporting the missing business casual attire to the proper authorities did our little Pam receive a phone call from the Residence Inn. While I wasn’t there, I imagine the exchange went a little something like this:

"Umm, Ms. [NAME WITHHELD TO PROTECT WHAT IS LEFT OF HER INNOCENCE] ? Hi, this is Danny from the front desk. Umm, can you describe some of the clothes you lost?"

"Well, it was your basic business type of stuff-- black pants, dark shirts… oh, and I had this cute little pink and black polka dot dress in there. Why? Did you find something?"

"Umm, well, we’re not sure. Someone will be contacting you soon."

Someone did contact Pam and that someone was the local police department asking her to-- okay, I am NOT exaggerating this -- come down to the station to identify her items. I’ve seen enough Law and Order to realize that this meant that she would be faced with some sort of clothing line-up. "Grey sweater set number two, could you please turn to the left."

So Pam went down to the station where all her conservative business casual clothing items were spread out on a table for the world to see, next to which was seated a young woman I like to refer to as: The Whore. This is not as a judgment, but a simple statement of fact. Pam’s clothes were stolen by an actual, real-life, working hard for her money, whore.

According to the police officer, The Whore had been turning tricks in this particular Residence Inn, and in the course of this trick-turning decided to "borrow" a key from one of her clients to see what she could pick up in the laundry room, clothing-wise.

"It was really a case of wrong place, wrong time," the police officer said. "Now, can you confirm for me that all these clothes are yours? I would even check the tags on the shirt she’s wearing. And you may want to double-check that bra…"

So when Pam called to tell me this story (which was prefaced by the exclamation: "Hey Amy! A whore stole my clothes!") you can imagine what my first question was:

"So you got to see The Whore’s bra?"

"Nah. I just told the cop that if she was wearing one of mine she could have it. She was wearing my shirt though."

"That bee-yatch!"

"Not really. I kind of took it as a compliment. Although I'm still a little pissed that I never found my polka dot dress."

"Well, maybe she knew it would be a big money-maker. You always did look a little slutty in it."

"Shut up!"