Keeping the Community Clean

After three months of living at the Dumpchester House I finally ventured down to the “P” level and located the community laundry room. What a seedy place to do anything, let alone bring my dirty linens. I’m going to move past the “Laundry room is for Dorchester residents only” sign. . .Like what? Is there a risk of hobos using our $3 per load laundry facilities? I say if a street folk takes the initiative to clean himself up, well then by god let him. . .and right into the room itself, which requires a keycard for access anyway. At any rate, the room is pretty standard for a large apartment complex facility–rows of washing machines and dryers, shitty tile floor, no windows, a panic button. Wait, what the fuck is that for?

 I felt completely safe in here all alone until I saw that little panic-maker on the wall. And what kind of panic is this for? Is it like because of the increased risk of flood or fire that this has been placed here? Or am I about to get raped? The second time I entered the room (to switch from wash to dry) another resident, about my age, was folding her laundry. You would think that this might bring comfort, having a cohort in this shady-ass clothes cleaning zone, but actually she brought about the opposite emotion, in the form of a panic attack.

 Why the fuck are you FOLDING down here? You should be spending as little time as humanly necessary in this room. For Christ’s sake there is a panic button on the wall! Pour your shit into the basket and hurry the hell out. I don’t want to have to walk by you thirty times while I switch my wet delicates in small handfuls from the washing machine on one side of the room to the goddamn dryer on the other. What’s worse, is when I opened my second machine, which housed a set of sheets, some towels and a blanket, it REEKED of wet marijuana. Ahhh jeez, how could I have washed a pot nugget? There weren’t even pockets in that load. Are you telling me that the couch blanket could smell that potent just because it got wet?

 Now what I wanted to do, was get a second opinion. What I did do, was stick my whole head down into the washing machine and take a deep breath. The girl folding her clothes inched slightly closer to the panic button at this point, so I hustled to switch my clothes and got the hell out of dodge.

 I would venture to guess that I do laundry less than ten times per year, partly because I’m lazy and would prefer to buy a new set of sheets and several dozen pairs of underwear in lieu of carting a hundred pounds of dirty clothes and linens to a creepy room, but mostly I just wish to avoid an awkward social situation that every building I’ve lived in since college insists I experience.

 My last building wasn’t so terrible, or at least the room itself wasn’t. I could never get past the “residents who don’t work should do their laundry between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.” because no one in my building seemed to work, and the lady that did had hired people to do her laundry and cleaning. What really got to me though, was carrying bag loads of clothes to the laundry room outside, past the homeless men digging for cans in my dumpster.

 “Yeaa, excuse me sir, me and my $200 jeans and my 300 T-shirts just need to slide right on by here. I had so much to drink that I threw up on this stuff and I want to get it nice and clean so I can wear it while I watch television all day on my comfy couch, in my warm shelter. I had a party last night if you want me to go ahead and bring those cans outside for you to take to the recycling center. No, really, you’d be doing ME a favor. Thanks.”

 Before that I lived in a building that provided one washer and one dryer for about 20 people. I don’t actually recall doing more than three or four loads of laundry during my tenure at that West L.A. location, but surely I would have had to. I’ll chalk up the lack of laundry doing to the fact that I spent most of that era on the beach and would have had little more than a swimsuit to wash at the end of each day. That, and I discovered a good friend with a live in housekeeper who never noticed how much or whose laundry she was actually doing.

 Prior to Los Angeles, was the Berkshire. Aaahhhh the Berkshire. An eclectic mix of ethnic families, retired octogenarians and American University students. The thought of that laundry room makes me want a shower. It was truly the worst of the worst. In appearance it was no different than my current one, but it’s ambience was somehow far more terrible. Perhaps it’s because of the tenants I witnessed doing laundry that I cannot think of that room with out gagging a little. Usually, if I would see said tenants, who were disgusting human beings (may they rest in peace) using a specific washer or dryer, that specific washer or dryer was immediately off limits to me.

 Maybe that sounds a little harsh, but one of these residents was a crotchety old man who smoked about four packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day and had a hacking/whooping/gagging cough to prove it. Fortunately, he hung out at the building entrance right below my window so I could hear him violently expelling lung butter all day, which not surprisingly inspired me to quit smoking (for two months). He also had only one eye, but wore glasses, so was obviously known as “Old Three Eye.” Needless to say, I didn’t want MY pillowcase swimming in the same washer as his smoking jacket, or anything else that had touched his person for that matter. Another resident I couldn’t wash after, was lovingly dubbed “Scalp,” due to her lack of hair and plethora of visible head skin. She wore Asian inspired silk nightgowns and spent day and night rummaging through the trash rooms digging through other people’s garbage. I’d just as soon sleep in a puddle of my own urine than use the same washer as her. Fortunately, she died my senior year, freeing up a lot of formerly tainted machines that I so desperately needed use of on busy Sundays in the laundry room.