’98 Miami Car Wash Blues – Fawzy Zablah
December 6, 2025
I worked at a car wash right off S. Dixie Hwy in Miami, south of The Falls.
The Falls is an open-air mall in Kendall.
This was in 1998 or thereabouts when I was still attending Miami Dade Community College, acing all my English and literature classes, and failing all the college algebra and science. I was probably around 20-years-old.
It was an easy job to get, you just needed to have arms and legs and they hired you on the spot. A pair of eyes helped too.
I had quit my lucrative position as a busboy at the Outback Steakhouse where I worked for 2 1/2 years. I terminated my own employment abruptly for reasons I don’t even remember now. All my friends had quit or something. I recall feeling like it was time to move on from steaks and blooming onions. Everyone knows that feeling, when you’ve been in a place too long.
I was searching for a new employer for about two or three months. I didn’t want to work at Publix supermarket because I lived next door to one and my mother was always there. My brother had worked there and my best friend from high school worked there. I wanted to be different, but it was really because my mother always sent me to Publix when she had forgotten something. So working at Publix, and shopping at Publix would be just too much Publix for me. Only a Floridian would understand that lazy conceit.
I became so desperate I even applied at a butcher shop but they wanted someone with more experience. Sometimes I think back that I could have been a butcher and perhaps a very good one and maybe with the grace of God run clumsily into the meaning of life. Every morning (five days a week) waking up at 4:00am to cut the meat. Learning all the parts of a cow and pig by heart, imagine the knowledge of an honest job like that. Meeting an honest woman who probably works at a Flanigan’s Restaurant or an Estrella Insurance and getting married and raising three kids on a meat cutter’s salary. That’s a complete life right there.
I don’t recall how I found out about the car wash job, but more than likely it was by walking up and down US1 with copies of my one-page resume. Those were the pre-internet days sort of.
The owner of the car wash was a former nose tackle that flunked out of one of the big Florida schools. He might have been a former Gator, if I recall correctly.
I do remember that it was his father that owned the gas station / auto repair shop on which the car wash was situated. Not sure if he paid his father a cut from the business but probably.
His father walked around the gas station with one of those Florida Cracker blue collar struts and seemed to be always aware of almost everything that was going on at any given time in the property. He was a short, handsome man that eerily looked like Ralph Lauren’s long-lost cousin. His eyes were piercingly blue and his white hair, combed back yet still fluffy, made him almost glow.
He strutted around the station checking on mechanics and hassling his son (my boss) for one thing or another. A lot of cussing, but never really raising his voice.
My boss was taller, and beefier and would talk back at his father Ralph Lauren at times but you could feel the respect he had for him. He would mess with his dad, playing practical jokes from time to time.
The boss had another car wash in Cutler Ridge and business was good because he had contracts with various car dealers by Old Cutler.
The pay was $200 a week in cash. And he would usually be short $50 or more.
The guy who ran the car wash for the boss was a Marlboro Reds chain smoking white guy named James. He had the lithe body of a a boy but the head and face of an American cowboy. He had these deep, beautiful blue eyes that evoked a not easy to come empathy. He also had porn ‘stache, and was divorced and had a daughter he talked about he constantly sent letters and gifts to. I think his ex and daughter stayed somewhere up in Tallahassee or thereabouts.
The third in command was a skinny vulture (shaved head, long neck and curved nose) looking kid not much older than me who drove a modded out gray ’92 Honda Civic Coupe. It was lowered with aftermarket wheels and a loud exhaust pipe on the back and he loved that car more than anyone I had ever seen love a car. He washed it himself every day after closing up.
He was a settled down guy too; he had a daughter with his young girlfriend who was already pregnant again. Or maybe they were married? I do not remember anymore.
The rest of the people that worked there was a carousel of Mexicans or Central Americans and sometimes one black guy or two. Not many stayed for long. The turnover rate was high and it had to do with the boss paying late in a consistent basis.
And there among them was I: skinny as a pole with a fleshy nose that made people think I was Italian or Jewish. And I had a funny name to boot and was a prime suspect for being ragged on.
Our boss drove a lifted blue Ford Truck which I thought was badass. It was not only lifted high, but it also had the huge monster truck tires. It was like his throne.
I didn’t have a car yet and the job was close enough to my house I could walk.
At that time, I knew I loved cars but I was not a “car guy” but I seemed to be still considering the car that would be the love of my life. All car guys have that car.
From what I remember my schedule ran from Wednesday to Saturday, 2-7 because I had community college in the morning.
The job was arduous. It was real shitty physical labor under the hot Miami sun. And it was recommended we wore sandals, ’cause our shoes would always get wet. I wore old sneakers that always got wet. Not sure why my dumb ass never bought sandals. I ended up getting toe nail fungus from that job that I eventually cleared up with prescription meds.
The quality of Down and Out folks my boss hired was a real eye opening and instructive experience. These were almost the lowest of the low. Men so worn down by life, their emotional and physical wounds had formed a kind of stunted avatar which you had to get past to get to the real person. It was a brilliant learning experience for an aspiring writer such as me.
It was also a big lesson on where I did not want to end up. There is no better place for a young person to work at than with a bunch of old, sad middle aged men walking around with emotional scars.
One time we were completely cleaning out an old cargo van that had been bought by one of the dealerships. We were told to throw out every bit of trash inside — including a stack of Penthouse Magazines.
After various jokes while leering at the centerfolds we kept one of the issues in the shed where we kept all the car wash tools to complete the job.
I became obsessed with that anniversary issue and the cover model, a blonde bombshell in the tradition of Pamela Anderson.
I wanted to steal the magazine but I pretended I didn’t care.
The Penthouse issue was now in the car wash cart in the shade and I thought about it all the time. Every time I came to work and when I left work, all I could think of was how to steal it and take it home.
I was horny and obsessed.
From 3pm-8pm all I thought about was how to steal that very special 30th anniversary Penthouse Magazine special issue.
When not working at the car wash, I would be at community college in the morning. I had to take two buses to get to the Kendall campus. One bus via the “Busway” to the metro station, and another bus from the metro station to school.
I ended up meeting a stripper while waiting for the bus at the Busway once. Her name was Starr. She was Brazilian, tall and slim with the longest, prettiest legs I had ever encountered in a woman. She was sexy without trying.
I was sitting at the Busway like any other day and she was sitting to the left of me, a few feet away on the long, uncomfortable metal bench.
I noticed her as soon as I sat down but before I could even think about mustering the courage to make conversation a dragonfly flew in circles between us. It was huge and seemed kind of disoriented. We watched it go from doing tight circles between us to one long oval and then it dropped dead halfway between us and we both laughed at the same time.
That felt like a cue and we started talking. She told me she was going to work and the name of the place. I thought she was referring to some kind of lingerie store not a strip club.
She asked me where I was heading and I said Miami Dade Kendall Campus.
She seemed confused and I blurted out it was a community college.
“What are you studying?”
“I’m going to major in English Literature.”
“You must like to read.”
“Yes, but I want to be a writer.”
“Wow, that is very ambitious.”
“Thank you? Is it?”
“Yes, that is a very brave thing. Not just anyone says they want to be a writer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s so cool. My favorite writer is Irish. Can you guess?”
“James Joyce?”
“Wow, that’s very impressive. Intelligence is sexy.”
“He’s one of my favorites too.”
“So, you’ve read Ulysses?”
I was going to lie. I was ready to lie because I knew all the basic plot points and what it was about but her eyes were so delicately beautiful and I knew they would not forgive me if I started our relationship with a lie. So I said no, I had not gotten to Ulysses yet.
“So you read Portrait, and Dubliners but not Ulysses? Well, what are you waiting for? It’s amazing. I read it all the time. And I reread it and I don’t know what most of it means but I love the dirty parts and I reread the ending all the time. I feel like it makes my brain less foggy. It kind of clears my mind. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Why haven’t you read it? What is your excuse?”
I hadn’t really thought about why I hadn’t picked up Ulysses yet until just now when she brought it up. I had read Portrait of the Artist twice and Dubliners three times. It felt strange to think about it because I wasn’t even sure why I liked them so much. Perhaps it was the Catholicism. I guess I could relate.
She was still waiting for an answer.
“I think I’m not ready for it. Like I probably will not appreciate it yet.”
“Wow, that’s so fascinating and I know what you mean but sometimes you have to jump in the pool without thinking about it.”
She had a big smile now.
“I was in love with an Irish guy once. He had the book in his house. It was his father’s book and after we broke up I stole it. I still have it, and it is falling apart but I tape it up every now and then with that see-through tape they sell at the pharmacy and I go on my merry way, continuing to read it and reread it. Do you want to guess why I love it so much?”
“No, why?”
“I love it because it’s a book about a man passionately in love with his woman. He loves her—”
“Leopold Bloom?”
“Yes, both Leo and James Joyce. Leopold loves his wife and people say he is a cuck, but he is so passionately in love with her in every way you can love a woman; for her virtues and for her failings and that is the only true love there really is. For God’s sake James Joyce’s wife jerked him off on the same day, that beautiful June day in Dublin she jerked him off without shame and claimed this brilliant man for herself and then they eloped to Switzerland and the rest is beautiful history.”
I was listening to every word.
“A man that jerks off to his wife for the rest of his life is a keeper. Have you ever read his letters to her? Oh, my God. So much passion. That is what I want.”
I didn’t know what to say. She was obviously way out of my league, physically and mentally so I brought the conversation to dumb things I could wrap my head around more easily before I put my foot in my mouth.
“So your name…it’s like the girl in the movie Lost Boys.”
“Mine has two ‘Rs’ at the end; STARR kind of like STARRY night. My father named me after a book he read called The Little Prince.”
We rode the bus together while I was still thinking she worked at some kind of women’s lingerie store. I didn’t get the clue until she asked me to pass by after my classes were over.
She looked at me up and down.
“How old are you again?”
“Just turned twenty.”
“They will let you in, they will give you a wrist band.”
“Why do I need a wrist band?”
“It’s a topless bar silly.”
“A what?”
“A strip club, honey.”
“Oh, okay. I thought it was like Victoria’s Secret or something.”
“Or something,” she said, looking right into my eyes. “You’re so adorable.”
She was smiling the entire bus ride and I felt elation. Her gaze was warm like a fireplace crackling. I think I was falling in love with a stripper.
“Yeah, I can pass by after my last class.”
“That would make me happy. We can continue our talk about Ulysses, and literature, and Zurich, and getting jerked off in public by the future love of your life!”
“Yes, that too.”
She was laughing now and it sounded like music to my horny ass.
“I love the Irish,” she said.
“Me too.”
“I aborted the Irish guy’s baby.”
I didn’t say anything because the way she said it had me confused. Was she joking?
She watched my reaction and bit her lower lip. Her eyes looked down like she was some kind of French Ingénue.
“I should have kept it,” she said. “Oh well.”
“Oh, well,” I said.
That day in class I couldn’t concentrate. All I kept thinking about was what it would be like to see her again. I already wanted her to be my girlfriend; she was beautiful and I was still a virgin.
I kept thinking this was too good to be true. I thought she might not be there. That it was all a lie. I was also ready to be disappointed. Why didn’t I ask for her phone number?
What if I impregnated her and she wanted to abort my baby? Was I ready for that? I don’t know how I feel about abortion but it didn’t feel right to me. But then I remembered I probably abort babies every time I jerk off, at least that’s what the Catholic Church says.
When I was done with my last class I headed back thinking about all kinds of wild situations before officially entering my first strip club.
The actual, full name of this adult entertainment establishment was Bare Necessity Lounge and Liquors. It was small and felt more like a dive bar with three poles behind the bartender. It was oval-shaped, and very dark with a section on the left side as you entered for private dances.
It smelled like cigarettes and Dior. The floor was sticky and the bartender looked like the platinum haired den mother of a tavern from the Middle Ages. She was top heavy, but such a pretty face with a worn-out smile that obviously had seen many, many things.
The place was empty except for an old grandpa at the end of the bar. He sat hunched down kind of like a humpback focused on the lone dancer while drinking a Coors with a wad of cash by his other hand, the one not holding on to the beer bottle like if he was holding a cup of chocolate on a cold day.
I don’t think he even noticed me.
“What will it be?” The bartender said.
“Hi, is Starr here?”
“Starr? Yeah, she’s in the back. What do you want to drink?”
At that exact moment Starr came out from the locker rooms wearing a smile that made me float and I felt my body shake like if I was cold.
“He’s with me,” she said to the bartender, and squeezed my cheeks, “Just a 20 year old babe so not legal yet.”
“In that case, cutie gets an arm band and a soda or I could make you a virgin Piña Colada.”
Starr smiled big and wide like she was hearing a joke, “I think a virgin Piña Colada would be perfect.”
I was about to sit next to Starr at the bar when she motioned me to one of the booths with the sticky floors. Those sticky floors were nasty and the place was smokey but she looked amazing and from what I recall, I did say that to her as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” played.
For a moment I just sat there taking her in with my eyes. The virgin Piña Colada arrived and she took a sip before me.
“I need to remember how a Piña Colada tastes.”
“What do you usually drink?”
“I don’t drink alcohol. I just like weed.”
“I’ve never done weed.”
“Really?”
“Yes…what’s it like?”
“It makes me hungry and sleepy. I sleep like a baby.”
She looked down at my drink and started rubbing my leg under the table.
“You should take a sip.”
I took a sip and it was very sweet.
“Would you like a dance?”
“A dance?”
“Yes,” she said, pointing to the back where the private rooms were at.
“Sure.”
“It’s twenty bucks per song but I’ll give you a deal since it’s so dead today.”
That afternoon I spent like $80 on private lap dances and went home with blue balls, smelling of cigarettes and J’adore. But I was now in love because she had also given me her phone number and promised to let me take her out on a real date.
I was young and dumb and counting my eggs way before they hatched but oh, well.
Sail on Young Werther into the deeply toxic water of 1990s Miami strip club life!
The following day at the car wash I didn’t say shit even though I felt like telling the world. But what would I even say? I met a stripper on the Busway and we dry humped in the private rooms in the back and it was everything I thought it would be and she gave me her phone number and promised to go on a movie date with me!? My boss would have gone directly to the club and found her and bought her right then and there and then tell me I could have sloppy seconds.
This was delicate and I knew I had to play it cool. I would not tell anyone of my good fortune. I would keep it to myself and once she was my girlfriend, officially, I could start talking like people in relationships talk: “Can’t stay late today, got plans with my GIRLFRIEND.” or “My GIRLFRIEND watches Friends, she loves it but I prefer Seinfeld.” and the classic, “I’m taking my GIRLFRIEND to a very special dinner date for her birthday at Bennigan’s.”
People will say, “Wow, he has a girlfriend. Someone has sex with him. Perhaps, he has a big dick. He’s not such a loser after all.”
I did not have a cell phone. And the number she had given me was obviously her land line.
She lived in the apartments right next to the Busway. It was a large apartment complex that was not too different from the one where I lived across S. Dixie Highway.
All day I thought about her and what it would be like to make love.
I called her the next day and before I could ask her to finalize our plans, she said she would really appreciate me coming to see her that night because it was usually dead and she would get bored and lonely.
I went again and dropped another $80 but at least we made out but that was it, and we did set a time and a date for our date. It would be next Thursday night at 8pm. She said, “Just come by and we’ll go eat somewhere and who knows what else.”
Back at the car wash our boss started messing around with a girl that worked at a local massage parlor. She would come around in a short skirt and blouse with thin straps and a purse and lead her to his lifted truck for some privacy.
Some of the other dudes started taking turns with her until the boss finally asked me if I wanted to partake. I said no.
“You’re missing out! Are you sure you’re not gay? HA!”
All my coworkers cackled like the car wash hyenas they are.
That evening as I walked home, I was thinking why I said no. Well, I got my girl now and what would be the point? And besides, my girl was much hotter. This girl was older and looked kind of beaten down by life and she didn’t seem to be too in control or maybe was even on drugs.
She did seem to be getting paid because I saw the boss hand her something at the end of the day. Then I thought he better not pay us late this week.
That night as I lay in bed I thought about Starr and what our life would be like in Zurich and how I would propose after she jerks me off like when Joyce got jerked off by Nora.
She will probably be the love of my life. Zurich would be nice and her pussy will feel like coming home, I’m sure. Then as I fell into dream land I could see the car wash shed door cracked open and it was night time and it was like I had just put away the cart with all the stuff and I could hear moaning behind the door and as I entered I saw Starr getting fucked by my boss and the rest of the crew and the Penthouse Magazine anniversary issue was floating above the scene, shining like if it was some kind of holy ghost and then I woke up.
Then Thursday I came and I went to class and I almost skipped it but decided to leave early on the last class, Women’s Lit, because I had already turned in my essay on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
When I got home, I borrowed some money from my mom to get a haircut, because I needed all the rest of the money I had for the date. I did not mention I had a date, I just told her I was gonna go to the movies with a friend.
“Which friend?”
I had to think fast, so I blurted out the name of a new friend from community college.
She looked at me. I smiled.
How will my blessed mother ever accept my exotic dancer girlfriend? I will have to make something up like, she works at a restaurant or she models but locally, she’s a local model while she goes to school. Does it matter? The only thing that really matters is that she’s Catholic. And she’s Brazilian, so that part I didn’t have to worry about. That was actually a huge relief for me because my mother would be forgiving of me marrying an exotic dancer as long as she was Catholic. For my mother, if she wasn’t a Baptist or an Evangelical, she was fine with it.
That early evening after getting my haircut and picking out the clothes and taking a nice long shower, and shaving in all the right spots, I was ready. My 20-year-old-heart was racing and my body trembled as I finished putting on my outfit: A blue buttoned down shirt with blue jeans and my new sneakers. I had no fashion sense whatsoever and I’m sure now thinking back I probably looked like a blue dork but hey, such is life.
I was early of course. I stood outside her door and knocked and knocked and there was no answer. I had even bought red roses at Publix supermarket. I felt like this was supposed to happen. I then did what any virgin who’s obviously getting stood up does, which was wait and wait and wait coming up with excuses and then I left to ride the metrorail.
I didn’t want to go home because my mother would be able to tell something was wrong and I didn’t want to explain anything or make up some dumb lie, making her think my imaginary friend stood me up.
I rode the Busway bus to Dadeland south station and road the metro north all the way to the Vizcaya station by where we used to live. I didn’t leave the station. I just sat and waited and waited and thought about calling her again from a telephone booth and I did but she didn’t pick and I think I left her a sad, pathetic message.
I eventually went back to Bare Necessity and she was long gone. A traveler they said, she was one of those girls that jumps from club to club. So I went and sat at the bar with my pathetic wrist band and the platinum blonde bartender felt bad and gave me a beer.
Then a tall, curvy red head walked in ready for her shift. She had legs like a rhino and breasts as big as what I imagined the centerfold in Penthouse Magazine in the car wash shed looked like.
She stood behind me. I felt her. She had presence like an Amazon woman; like the very Wonder Woman of my dreams.
She ran her soft, meaty hands through my hair.
“Would you like a dance, sugar?”
I turned smiling and she hugged me and I could have cried in those huge tits of hers but I didn’t and instead dissolved into paradise.
The next day I walked into the car wash and quit.