WHAT I’VE LEARNED IN MY BUILDING’S LAUNDRY ROOM.
In New York City, laundry rooms are hotbeds of dispute, a conglomerate of people of all backgrounds and social status linked by a common purpose for a minute sliver of their busy lives. Historically speaking laundry was a chore reserved to women and when the first communal wash houses appeared in Europe in the 1900s, they became a place of congregation for women to socialize. The expression 'acting like a wash woman' and the Catalan idiom 'fer safareig' ('to do the laundry') both refer to 'gossip.' Today the chore is gender neutral and socializing is the last thing on the mind of overstimulated New Yorkers, who approach laundry duty in stoic silence and engaged introspection.
Observing people in a laundry room is the perfect microcosm representation of societal rules in a specific culture. In New York City doing the laundry (like everything else) illustrates the concept of 'the survival of the fittest' where caring, compassionate people transform into ruthless and vicious ones. The transformation is inevitable as notoriously private New Yorkers have the most intimate details of their lives literally hanging out to dry. I feel this invasion every time I walk down my brightly lit laundry room, carrying both my week's load and my belligerent spirit. I wonder if everyone feels so defensive and vulnerable like I do. Does anyone else ask themselves the same questions? I ask myself:
"Do you really want the dude from 5C to know you wear lacy underwear?"
or "That you still hold on to the oversized hockey jersey of the most recent boyfriend who, before breaking your heart, would always talk sports in the elevator with the aforementioned dude from 5C?"
Folding your clothes in public is like inviting the viewers into your bedroom and giving them front row seats to your existence. The set up is ludicrous and a bit creepy. I personally, growing up, always felt unsure of how to make sense of my father's tidy whities recklessly drying on the clotheslines in our garden in plain view for the entire neighborhood. And this coming from a man so secretive and taciturn he thinks your doctor is a busybody by asking you about your symptoms when sick!
Before the advent of modern washing machines, doing the laundry was an intense activity. Imagine yourself on your knees on a riverbed in scorching or freezing temperatures, beating your laundry with wooden bats on rocks or blocks, called battling blocks in an epic fight against your own dirt. Being able to wear clean clothes represented the glory of these conquering spirits, it required skill, dedication, heck even drive! Since we've lost the raw savagery of the olden watercourses days, and doing the laundry has become a brain-less task, we now take the frustration onto each other. I've come close to fist fights with fellow laundry-doers overstepping their boundaries on common sense and reciprocal respect. Do your laundry, yes, but please realize that other people roam the world, and you guessed it, they have dirty laundry too! Just like hoarding the front space of a crowded bus while the back is completely empty or insisting on keeping a backpack on while playing 'meet-my-backside-complete-stranger' on a rush hour subway car, the lack of acknowledgement that there are other people around us, infuriates me! And even though I admit that finding peace in New York City may be hard work, I most always grumble in disapproval of the gurus of the world, who have found enlightenment and purity of thought amongst the green environment of some untouched paradise somewhere. Even the Dalai Lama lost some points in my book when he spoke of Richard Gere as a holy man....show me a man who finds peace in a NYC laundry room! He is surely a wise and holy man!
My friend Daisy, whom I've met as she prevented my fist from bruising the awaiting cheek of a fellow laundry-doer, insists I take things too seriously. We are both driven by the fiery artistic temperament and our NY zip code, but she is softened by her unshakable southerner charm oozing out of her pores and mellifluous lexicon.
When I see it as a violation of our social rights, she scoffs:
"The guy is just clueless and drying one item at the time. Just ignore him."
With my rebuttal that our basic necessities of life are jeopardized when someone decides to use all the washing machines while the rest of us wait, standing there like lemons, again she reprimands me for my impatience:
"Honey, don't fret! Once he's done they are all ours."
I still can't comply!
I remind her of the adjective 'communal', pronounce it slowly, emphatically and do a quick passive aggressive search of the meaning of the word on my iPhone:
com·mu·nal/kəˈmyo͞ onl,ˈkämyənəl/
adjective
1. shared by all members of a community; for common use. "a communal bathroom and kitchen"
synonyms: shared, joint, common
I brandish the phone to her triumphantly and in return she eyes me with pity and motherly concern, her cockeyed, warm expression trying both to dissuade and comfort.
And I don't buy it....south or north of the Carolinas we all experience in entering a communal laundry room either a sense of loathing or camaraderie. Sure, if you are there before me, I will size you up with interest and animosity, analyze everything you do, dislike the amount of clothes you still need to wash and judge you by the detergent you use (you are either pretentious or cheap); but if you come after me, I will smile at you with the sympathy of a nurse in a doctor's office when you show up 10 minutes early for your scheduled appointment but the doctor is still golfing and she knows that he is not rushing in today.
Doing your laundry is significantly impregnated with symbolism and the people who share your space while your clothes are being laundered should be your emotional accomplices not your enemies! Please respect my vulnerability and I will support your journey as well. I won't judge you because your high school shirts don't fit you anymore and you insist on wearing them showing your rotund belly; I won't snicker at your 70s bell bottoms that remind you of your lost love or at the pink socks that once were white until you accidentally threw them in with the colors massaging your swollen eyes after you cried yourself to sleep for a week as you lost your job. Most of all I will support you as you forlornly hold on to the scarf of your departed mother to whom you never truly opened up until it was too late or to the apron that your college bound daughter bought you in Paris before she stopped talking to you and blamed you for all her unhappiness and shortcomings.
The tragedy and unfairness of the world are all there, in the clothes we wear. The washrooms and laundry-rooms are like revered pantheons where we purify ourselves by offering the sacrificial tears on our sleeves, the remnants of our physical and figurative spilled milk.
