The Mayor of Cook St Village Laundromat

First published at Life As A Human March 2010.

“A laundromat? Seriously?” said a friend of mine the other day.

He apologized right away. That is, after I said:

“Are you judging me because I use a laundromat, or because I’m not ashamed of it?”

Here’s the thing: in between success and failure, glamour and an old bathrobe, a laundry room and a laundromat, I like to think there lies in me a hard-working mom with one job, no car, a few too many debts, and a certain graceful resilience.

Here’s my secret: it’s been a relentless struggle to get to the next birthday. I clawed and persevered and got up when I didn’t feel like it and smiled when I was screaming inside until somehow I made it to 45.

It was easy when I was a six-year-old girl skipping down the street in late summer’s first day of school, first day of hope.

It was hard when I was a seven year old running away from the pebble-laced snow-face-washes from the bigger kids at school, finally reaching the safety of the porch to find – wearing my wet pants – a locked door, and after an eternity of knocking, a disapproving (drunk) mom.

It was joyous when I climbed the playground jungle gym with my kids – shouting Marco! Polo! (They taught me that game.)

But for too long it was viscous and slimy, like swimming in jello. It was laying on the sofa, head aching, all of them clamouring for PB&J like little birds with their mouths wide open, incessantly chirping, and I helpless, spent, numb, fighting the darkness with the words of that wise old Scottish lullaby:

“Hee-oh wee-oh what shall I do with you?/Black’s the life that I lead wi’you….”

After a while – too long perhaps – I learned to just sink into it.

Just – let it in.

If I get up and go through the motions every day. If I write it all down. If I allow it to be. If I open wide and swallow that jello. Just gulp it all down. Accept the blackness as an old dear friend.

I found out – the hard way – that giving up the struggle is half the battle.

And, eventually, in between the British Red lipstick and drunken dance floor foolishness; slow-acting SSRIs and escapes to the mountains; headache days in sweatpants and smart skirt suits at the office …

I found out there lies, between the darkness and the light: a poet, a writer, a traveler, a climber, an adventurer, a seductress …

The Mayor of Cook St. Village Laundromat.

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Laundry Day

by Muse

Blowing off a rainy hill workout to sit at the laundromat. A group of runners trots past, headlamps bobbing in the winter evening’s darkness.

Laundry Day by Peekature Studios

<<Guilt>>

OK, that passed quickly.

Hey maybe this is a good place to meet single men. Or women. Or not.

Nevermind.

Maybe the resolution last year would have been more successful if it been “Remain celibate and joyfully single” rather than the trap-door-open-for-sex-and-entanglement wording: “Remain joyfully single.”

Reverse-engineering, as far as she can tell, means taking something apart to see how it works rather than building it from scratch.

She’s discovered she reverse-engineers her relationships: she jumps into full-bore couple-hood with no user documentation. She falls in love right away and imagines herself waking up with him every morning. Convinces herself that her life is imperfect without him, impatiently waits for him to Be Exclusive. Stops seeing friends socially, drops any other romantic prospects. Imagines a life of comfortable domestic bliss.

(One of these days she’s going to realize the guys giving their assent to all this are just as unlikely as she is to be candidates for Lasting Happiness.)

Then, one day, sooner rather than later – maybe two months, maybe six months into it, she looks at him with renewed clarity. He’s got his eyes tightly closed the whole time they’re having sex, or he really does look like the cartoon guy from MAD Magazine with a vapid smile and even more vapid personality, or he won’t stop inflecting the end of his sentences up like a teenager when he speaks, or he’s petting her like he pets his dogs, or he tells his jokes too loud in restaurants, or he asks to borrow her car for the umpteenth time, never filling it with gas.

At that point, she’ll look at him with complete transparency, and a switch goes from “On” to “Off,” and just like that —it’s over. Pieces of a hurried relationship all over the floor; she has no clue how to put it back together again.

He usually senses it. The whole facade is deconstructed in a heartbeat. She tries to recapture the magic, tries to remember what she saw in him in the first place – tries to backtrack into the Just Dating stage; realizes she’s already given her heart away and invested her emotional capital in a fantasyland of Couplehood.

He of course is usually completely mystified, left with pieces of his heart and his manhood strewn about in little pieces.

Her phone rings-his name comes up on the screen-she startles; the drone and hum of the laundromat has lulled her to a stupor. She tries to perk up, moves to answer, but her plastic smile doesn’t make it to her eyes and she loses her nerve. Instead, she hits the “ignore” button and folds her towels.

The running group trots past again, going back the other way this time. She lugs her laundry home, pulls out her runners and straps on the headlamp, seeking redemption in the shiny streets.

(Then again, maybe she just hasn’t met the right one yet.)

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