Some of my most intimate memories involve Laundry. In fact, many of them do. This sounds like an odd declaration – even in the context of other declarations made on this blog – so let me explain a little:
To you, the word 'intimate' may suggest moments shared between people. Moments of closeness experienced, understood and remembered only by them. To me, in this instance, 'intimate' means private, alone, quiet and personal. Laundry means all of this in my memories.
I grew up in house, that sat on a block of land with an extreme slope that ran down from a worn patch of grass out the front, to a concrete rectangle around the back. If you walked up Wilgah St. today and looked beyond the five foot high, front brick fence (partly covered in sparse, random pockets of slow growing ivy that refuses to adhere to my mother's quest to cover over the large, ice-cream-green couloured bricks) you would appear to be looking at a single storey house. However, the extreme slope down and the foundations necessary to leveling out the house above, creates a lower basement level, that begins halfway back. Most people who have been in that house – and over the years, for one reason or another, thousands of people have visited – would not know about the three rooms that exist down there.
One of the rooms, a tiny, concrete and tile affair with a window ledge that levels off at the ground, contains a toilet, a shower, a large washing machine and an even larger drier. The toilet was very rarely used, the shower never used, but the washing machine and drier? Well, let me put it this way: ten children were brought up in that house, so those two appliances saw more than their fair share of service.
Directly above this laundry room, on the ground floor, was the bathroom shared by the three bedrooms at the back of the house. These bedrooms were stacked with bunkbeds and were where we slept until old enough to leave – or old enough to be 'asked' to leave. Hence, that bathroom, with it's blue tiles, blue faucets, blue shower door, blue toilet seat and blue towel racks was called 'The Kid's Bathroom'. To the left of the blue sink, the countertop could be lifted up like a trapdoor, to reveal a chute that fell down directly into the washing machine in that room below.
This chute was a brilliant idea. I'm not sure who came up with it – it seems way too practical and ingenious to be something my very unhandy parents would have thought of – but, still to this day it remains one of the most brilliant and simple innovations I've ever personally interacted it with. It was magical. It really was. As a small boy, I could wrestle up the heavy bit of timber, drop down any piece of dirty clothing and a day or two later, like magic it would reappear clean, pressed and folded back into my cupboard.
I sort of knew what happened down there, but not really. I knew my mother was using those two loud machines to care for us in an unspoken way. I knew she'd spend a day at work and then come home to hang all sorts of different clothes and towels and bedsheets up on the Hill's Hoist out the back. I knew this, because she would stand out there hanging, whilst we whizzed around hitting tennis balls past her, caught in the midst of epic backyard cricket triumphs. I knew the day would come when she would no longer do this little bit of magic for me. Partly because of that, I did not want to know what or how she was doing it. I didn't want to pull back the Wizard's curtain and kill the mystique with knowledge of the mechanics.
Some fifteen years after I last lived out on Wilgah St., I found myself in another orthodox Jewish neighborhood. This one was up in a leafy part of North London. I initially meant to be there for a while, but after a short time, I felt I had been there too long. Something or someone or somewhere was calling me back to New York (only I know which one of those three words is most accurate, but this blog ain't for accuracy). After six months, I had finally managed to find a Service Laundry I liked - a major determining factor in what goes into making me feel settled in a new place. Only once I have found a Service Laundry I feel comfortable with, do I then feel comfortable with where I am.
It was only a matter of weeks after achieving this state of relative Zen, that I now planned to leave town. It wasn't lost on me the whole irony of the situation. After months of unease, I was now leaving so soon after finding this shop under the Northern Line bridge that had suddenly made me feel somewhat settled. Sometimes that's just the way it goes. Sometimes it is only The Leaving that makes what is left behind feel right.
I timed up the packing of my suitcase to perfectly coincide with my final trip to the Laundry. My new Vietnamese friend there folded so competently and so tightly, that a full garbage bag of dirty clothes, would be returned back in a small, plastic supermarket bag. In my mind, the plan was to deliver her all of my clothes - dirty or not – which she would then wash and fold all compacted down and then I could return home and literally drop it all in one go into the suitcase. Essentially, I could pack for a change of country in all of three minutes.
Well friends, let me tell you, even as I type this now I realise this does sound like a foolish, immature plan. The sort of plan that is doomed and certain to fail. The thing is, it worked perfectly. Better than I had even hoped for. I was mentally in such a rush to return back over the other side of the Atlantic and amazingly the packing part of it of it went along just the same. It was perfect. On this particular visit, London had been so uncooperative. So much of my time had been a confusing struggle against forces that were aiming at the very same target as I, yet still felt the need push up and against. All it took was one Vietnamese lady, 18 Pounds Sterling and three minutes for that to all wash away. ( And DON'T excuse the pun - isn't it spectacular? )
I'm sitting on the subway now, typing on the BlackBerry, as I circle the network. I'm going around, collecting possessions I have stashed at random places. I'm on my way to a Brooklyn Heights Laundry for my final pick up. Some shirts. Only a few, I think. I hadn't left all the ones I wanted to. I wasn't able to. The woman behind the counter doesn't know this will be the last time I see her. She doesn't know this will be me saying goodbye. I'm going to give her my money and take back what is mine. I'll smile, wish some sort of platitude and step off in a cheerful manner - all of which will be conducted as part of a masking process.
See, I liked this one. Loved it. It never had the time to deliver all it promised, but I believed it would. I believed in it's promise. I'm getting too tired to continue on believing in every promise, yet this time I was energised. And still.....
So, I'm gonna take these pressed shirts straight back uptown and fold and crease them down into my suitcase. I'm leaving again and even my laundry won't remember being here.
There you have it - laundry and some of it's moments of intimacy for me.
I have skipped over many memories and only delivered you three. Memories are meant to be like that. History is told full and chronological, but Memory needs no order nor apology for ommision. Purposely, I have skipped the stories involving me doing my own laundry. These are the truly intimate memories and ones I choose to almost never share. Besides, they wont help you understand. They wont help you understand how I wish to go. How I wish to spend my final day.
And that's really what this whole post is about - to help you understand. You see, I've worked it out. I've worked out how I want my last day on this planet to go.
I’d spend it in bed, peeling and popping pistachios whilst snorting the purest, sticky cocaine off a searingly hot dinner plate and throwing down handfuls of vicodin with gulps of some yellowy sport drink. And as my constitution reaches a state of panicked, circling confusion, I'll sweep up a large bag of laundry and head down the street for one last, perfect service wash.
