DIRTY NEVER FELT SO CLEAN
When I moved in to the Monopoly house in July, it didn’t bother me that not only did it not have a washer/dryer, but it didn’t even have hook ups for them. I was content to be old school and do laundry at the Laundromat. I had visions of the way Laundromats were once almost romanticized in movies and TV…sitting around smoking cigarettes outside, having conversations with your friend; choreographed, yet impromptu dance sessions with the laundry cart and other patrons; and meeting that intriguing stranger who ended up capturing your heart and broke it by the end of your load when you saw him folding his girlfriend’s panties. This would be my new life, and I was going to rock it. Oh the stories that would be had.
Now, you may be laughing at my vision of the Laundromat, but you have to understand something first. Two times ago when I moved back to Washington, I was living in Bellevue and refused to pay extra on my rent for a washer/dryer, which I now look back and realize it would have saved me money since the Laundromat ends up not being very inexpensive. A few weeks after I moved in there, my friend Desiree from Phoenix came to stay with me for a month. It was a fantastic time and we had many adventures and lots of laughs, but one of my favorite things we did was go to the Laundromat next to the Safeway in Overlake. We’d sit outside and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and gossip and giggle and talk about my new boyfriend and the boys she was meeting while visiting. It was never boring and fit that vision in my head of what a Laundromat was supposed to be. No, we never met our dream man or even a cute boy, and if I recall correctly, we had a few moments of trying to fold our unmentionables while trying to hide them from the gazes of a creepy man staring at us. And we never danced with carts, but I blame that on the fact there were no carts. But the conversations…they fit every piece of the movie in my head of what it was supposed to be like. I loved it.
My first trip to the Laundromat up the road did not meet one piece of my movies and shows, with the exception of it actually looked like what I always envisioned, complete with the carts that I would dance with in my head. I towed in a mountain of sheets and dirty clothes and started the monotonous ritual of load, soap, set and go to the next machine. Once I had four of the machines loaded, I sat on a bench, pulled out a book and looked around. I was not only the youngest person in there (and at almost 40, I don’t qualify as “young”), but the only white person in there. I felt disappointed that this was not going to be the multicultural dance off I was hoping for. Nostalgia set in and I recalled the days of Sit and Spin in Seattle where you could eat, drink beer, play board games and do your laundry, and it was a variety of people and ages. This was definitely not the Sit and Spin, and the only thing close to some good music and a board game was an Applebee’s commercial on the TV and the pattern of used dryer sheets and pennies on the floor that kind of resembled a game of Tic-Tac –Toe.
“I’m not giving up on my vision,” I told myself in my head.
I don’t think I ever made it past the second page of my book because every time I heard the “beep-beep” that went off every time the door opened, I looked up to check out what could possibly be either a new friend or the next man I lost my head over. While after my first hour the place finally hit the multicultural mark, I didn’t see many options for the new friend minus the woman chewing out her boyfriend. As far as my future ex-boyfriend, my best options were either the man who resembled Snoop Dog or the gay redheaded man. And as for the Fame style spontaneous dance sequence with the carts, no one seemed into this idea minus the guy getting chewed out who I thought might throw the cart…but that could be a dance move, right? I instead texted my friend Shane about all the weird things I was seeing and how bored I was. I left that night with clean clothes, an unfulfilled vision and $30 poorer.
Upon hearing how much it cost me to do my laundry, some of my friends offered up their washers and dryers, which I utilized when it was convenient for them. However, folks have been busy and I feel bad doing so much laundry (sheets and massage quickly create a laundry nightmare), so I instead let my laundry mount. Minus the basics, which I would do at Dolores’ during our Walking Dead date nights, it was getting bad. So upon completing my half day of work today, I came home and finally accepted the fact that I could no longer tolerate my dog-hair covered comforter and was down to one pair of sheets. I had to go back.
My expectations were low after my last time at the Laundromat, so I wasn’t expecting much more than flat out boredom and survival. I got a laundry card, added the money, dragged my bag of sheets and my comforter to the machine, got them going and plunked down on a bench with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, thanks to Eylin’s donation and Tommy’s rave review. I was sucked in instantly and made it almost to the end of the loads of wash when something happened.
In the back row of the machines, I saw the tall bar of a laundry cart poking above the washer skyline like a shark’s fin warning you of its presence. It would stop, pivot, speed up, crash into a wall, halt, and repeat.
I stood up to try to see who was controlling this thing and muttered, “What in the hell?” Taking a few steps forward, the cart rounded my corner at great speed and I ran back to the bench to avoid getting hit. “At the wheel” per se, was a little girl, maybe two at most, with an inhuman amount of hair, running like a fawn that just found her legs. She crashed into my cart, stopped and looked at me with surprise, flashed a huge smile and screamed, “Hiiii!’ and took off like a bumper car out of hell again. I sat back down and cracked up and realized that while I was not a participant, and it wasn’t my perfect vision of it, I kind of had my dance scene…it just happened to be between a laundry cart and a toddler. It was good enough.
Once I switched out my wash, I moved to the bench with no back by the dryers and went back to my book. After a few pages, my back began to ache, but I liked my new spot. I grabbed my purse and my parka and made a bed on the bench. I cozied up with my book and quickly lost track of what I was reading due to the sound of dryers. I rolled over onto my side and watched my laundry spin and was almost instantly mesmerized by the colors spinning up and dropping back down with brief moments of flying. I know it sounds idiotic, but it became poetic. I started humming “Rainbow Connection” and it fit the exact pattern of the roll of clothes. My eyelids started to droop and I stopped humming. Out of nowhere, some woman on the opposite side shouted, “Sweet Jesus, Lord!” and began belting out gospel music. It was beautiful and she unknowingly sang me to sleep. Yes, I fell asleep on a bench next to the dryers. And it was at that moment of drifting off that I fell in love with the Laundromat.
I quit smoking almost two years ago, I don’t think I could get a friend to hang out with me at a Laundromat if I paid them, I’ve yet to dance with a cart, and the most I’d get out of a relationship with someone I met there is probably a bad case of gonorrhea. Yet in some odd way, tonight I left there fulfilled, a little more rested, a little calmer, and quite content that this was a baby step on the road to my nerd vision of how clothes really get clean when you don’t own a washer/dryer.
Now, you may be laughing at my vision of the Laundromat, but you have to understand something first. Two times ago when I moved back to Washington, I was living in Bellevue and refused to pay extra on my rent for a washer/dryer, which I now look back and realize it would have saved me money since the Laundromat ends up not being very inexpensive. A few weeks after I moved in there, my friend Desiree from Phoenix came to stay with me for a month. It was a fantastic time and we had many adventures and lots of laughs, but one of my favorite things we did was go to the Laundromat next to the Safeway in Overlake. We’d sit outside and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and gossip and giggle and talk about my new boyfriend and the boys she was meeting while visiting. It was never boring and fit that vision in my head of what a Laundromat was supposed to be. No, we never met our dream man or even a cute boy, and if I recall correctly, we had a few moments of trying to fold our unmentionables while trying to hide them from the gazes of a creepy man staring at us. And we never danced with carts, but I blame that on the fact there were no carts. But the conversations…they fit every piece of the movie in my head of what it was supposed to be like. I loved it.
My first trip to the Laundromat up the road did not meet one piece of my movies and shows, with the exception of it actually looked like what I always envisioned, complete with the carts that I would dance with in my head. I towed in a mountain of sheets and dirty clothes and started the monotonous ritual of load, soap, set and go to the next machine. Once I had four of the machines loaded, I sat on a bench, pulled out a book and looked around. I was not only the youngest person in there (and at almost 40, I don’t qualify as “young”), but the only white person in there. I felt disappointed that this was not going to be the multicultural dance off I was hoping for. Nostalgia set in and I recalled the days of Sit and Spin in Seattle where you could eat, drink beer, play board games and do your laundry, and it was a variety of people and ages. This was definitely not the Sit and Spin, and the only thing close to some good music and a board game was an Applebee’s commercial on the TV and the pattern of used dryer sheets and pennies on the floor that kind of resembled a game of Tic-Tac –Toe.
“I’m not giving up on my vision,” I told myself in my head.
I don’t think I ever made it past the second page of my book because every time I heard the “beep-beep” that went off every time the door opened, I looked up to check out what could possibly be either a new friend or the next man I lost my head over. While after my first hour the place finally hit the multicultural mark, I didn’t see many options for the new friend minus the woman chewing out her boyfriend. As far as my future ex-boyfriend, my best options were either the man who resembled Snoop Dog or the gay redheaded man. And as for the Fame style spontaneous dance sequence with the carts, no one seemed into this idea minus the guy getting chewed out who I thought might throw the cart…but that could be a dance move, right? I instead texted my friend Shane about all the weird things I was seeing and how bored I was. I left that night with clean clothes, an unfulfilled vision and $30 poorer.
Upon hearing how much it cost me to do my laundry, some of my friends offered up their washers and dryers, which I utilized when it was convenient for them. However, folks have been busy and I feel bad doing so much laundry (sheets and massage quickly create a laundry nightmare), so I instead let my laundry mount. Minus the basics, which I would do at Dolores’ during our Walking Dead date nights, it was getting bad. So upon completing my half day of work today, I came home and finally accepted the fact that I could no longer tolerate my dog-hair covered comforter and was down to one pair of sheets. I had to go back.
My expectations were low after my last time at the Laundromat, so I wasn’t expecting much more than flat out boredom and survival. I got a laundry card, added the money, dragged my bag of sheets and my comforter to the machine, got them going and plunked down on a bench with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, thanks to Eylin’s donation and Tommy’s rave review. I was sucked in instantly and made it almost to the end of the loads of wash when something happened.
In the back row of the machines, I saw the tall bar of a laundry cart poking above the washer skyline like a shark’s fin warning you of its presence. It would stop, pivot, speed up, crash into a wall, halt, and repeat.
I stood up to try to see who was controlling this thing and muttered, “What in the hell?” Taking a few steps forward, the cart rounded my corner at great speed and I ran back to the bench to avoid getting hit. “At the wheel” per se, was a little girl, maybe two at most, with an inhuman amount of hair, running like a fawn that just found her legs. She crashed into my cart, stopped and looked at me with surprise, flashed a huge smile and screamed, “Hiiii!’ and took off like a bumper car out of hell again. I sat back down and cracked up and realized that while I was not a participant, and it wasn’t my perfect vision of it, I kind of had my dance scene…it just happened to be between a laundry cart and a toddler. It was good enough.
Once I switched out my wash, I moved to the bench with no back by the dryers and went back to my book. After a few pages, my back began to ache, but I liked my new spot. I grabbed my purse and my parka and made a bed on the bench. I cozied up with my book and quickly lost track of what I was reading due to the sound of dryers. I rolled over onto my side and watched my laundry spin and was almost instantly mesmerized by the colors spinning up and dropping back down with brief moments of flying. I know it sounds idiotic, but it became poetic. I started humming “Rainbow Connection” and it fit the exact pattern of the roll of clothes. My eyelids started to droop and I stopped humming. Out of nowhere, some woman on the opposite side shouted, “Sweet Jesus, Lord!” and began belting out gospel music. It was beautiful and she unknowingly sang me to sleep. Yes, I fell asleep on a bench next to the dryers. And it was at that moment of drifting off that I fell in love with the Laundromat.
I quit smoking almost two years ago, I don’t think I could get a friend to hang out with me at a Laundromat if I paid them, I’ve yet to dance with a cart, and the most I’d get out of a relationship with someone I met there is probably a bad case of gonorrhea. Yet in some odd way, tonight I left there fulfilled, a little more rested, a little calmer, and quite content that this was a baby step on the road to my nerd vision of how clothes really get clean when you don’t own a washer/dryer.
