My building's laundry machine has been broken since August, so on Sundays I haul my life in a giant IKEA bag to the laundromat off the L in Williamsburg.
I've decided this is fine, actually. Because the Williamsburg laundromat on a Sunday is the most honest place in New York.
Something about the warm air and the tumbling and the fact that nobody's going anywhere for forty minutes turns everyone into a confessional booth. I've heard breakups planned. Grocery lists argued over. A man on the phone say "Ma, I told you, I'm not moving back to Ohio."
I just sit on the plastic chair with my knees up, pretending to scroll, absorbing it all like the nosy little sponge I am.
There's a woman who's always there when I am. We've never spoken but we've reached that intimacy where we save each other the good folding table. On Sunday she nodded at my detergent — I use the fancy one that smells like a garden — and gave me a look like she approved of my choices. I've never felt more seen.
The Williamsburg laundromat has a TV that only plays telenovelas and a vending machine that eats dollars and a bulletin board with three lost cats and one guitar for sale. It has been exactly the same for the two years I've lived here and I hope it never changes.
Growing up, laundry was Ba supervising the dhobi and the whole terrace strung with drying saris flapping like flags. Here it's fluorescent lights and quarters and strangers' secrets. Different, but somehow the same ritual of clean starting over.
I folded my clothes badly, as usual. The nod-woman folded hers into perfect squares like a person who has her life together.
The L back was quick. My clothes smelled like a garden.
Some cities you find in monuments. This one I find in a laundromat on a Sunday.
Love,