Take Me to the Laundromat
Laundromats. I adore them. …The persistent rhythmic sounds of tangled lumps of clothing, tumbling and spinning, tumbling and spinning — sometimes with an extra ‘click-ka-click click-ka-click’ of a jacket’s zipper or a shirt’s button.
I love sitting off to the side, watching people methodically shove, put, pull, wring, shake, and fold each in their own kind of way. At this moment, I’m watching someone’s shorts stuck in an eddy of swirling peers—the drawstring having gotten snagged, by some all too common coincidence, on the dryer door. (Much like the case of the disappearing sock…seemingly unlikely, but all too frequent.) Wedged firmly, the drawstring is slowly working its way out of the waistband of the shorts, like a snake tugging and wriggling in order to escape a too-tightly-knit sweater. Every time the weight and momentum of the rest of the load loops by, the drawstring in silent resistance, defies the mindless, accepted norm of the rest of the clothes.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, a washer seems to have lost its balance with a load - emitting that distinguishable ‘Kuuh-thunk! Kuuh-thunk! Kuuh-thunk!’ As if this heavy machine was giving its greatest effort -mind you, without any legs - to escape its ill-fated, but necessary destiny of forever half-drowning and undergoing immense and intense dizziness, to selflessly rinse, wash, and clean dirty, stinky socks, blankets, shirts, underwear, pants, pillowcases, and so forth over and over and over and over again! … after a time, it has made little progress as far as covering distance goes. Though it has made tremendous progress in being an audible annoyance. Realizing it is leashed; tethered by lines of electricity, resigned to do its dirty work, with no escape imminent, It collects itself and returns to a state of balance, reducing its vocal complaint to a more subtle, pulsing vibration of a grumbling whisper.
Indefatigable cycles carry on.
Another classic sound is the repetitive ‘clink’ of several silvery wafers of metal being pushed through small slots and dropping into a pool of fellow twenty-five cent pieces below. We shove our quarters in, one after another. As if we were all gambling on the surety of our clothes being made wet and clean and then dry and fresh. The odds of this not happening are of course pretty much only increased by an inadequate supply of quarters. I suppose like most of life, with enough money, the odds are always in our favor.
An older woman, and what I suspect is her daughter, gossip about friends and family and talk about life as they fold their respective piles of laundered wearables together. All in hushed tones, making me feel almost like I’m in a library- a library with many articles….of clothing. I suppose they speak quietly so as not to ‘air their dirt laundry in public.’ …This is apparently the paragraph of word plays and puns.
That said, there is a peacefulness within the laundromat. A meditative concoction of syncopated rhythms. It makes me feel so calm. Maybe it’s just the hum of white noise. Maybe it’s the cornucopia of fresh scents of detergent. Maybe it’s the feeling that this space is outside of time. Or simply that in increments of whatever pre-selected amount of service time a quarter is worth, makes it feel less chaotic than the outer world where little has order in regards of time. Whatever it is, it is nice. It is soothing, pleasant even, and relaxing.
I rouse from my mental ruse since my own warmed and dried laundry has come to a stop. Naturally, no matter how much I shield the dryer door opening and no matter how widely covered the space below is with my basket, a sock still falls on the floor. I might even say deliberately jumps to the floor. Clothing desires to be dirty. Always in revolt to cleanliness. I take no real issue with the clean sock leaping onto the ‘dirty’ floor. I carry on pulling out a jungle of tangled clothes. The self-prescribed OCD man next to me comments on the sock. He can’t handle it. I try to calm him. I appreciate his concern but know my foot will survive when I put that sock on. He’s apparently a regular at this laundromat—claiming to have spent millions here.
I love these curious and strange interactions.
I love this space perfect for pensiveness.
One of the long-standing bastions of communal space.
Take me to the laundromat.
