Went down to a laundromat on the other side of town today. The Water Dragon. That’s a good name for a laundry, no? It is in a barn-shaped strip mall on Enterprise Drive just on the west side of the train tracks. There’s two short aisles of small washers and an aisle of big washers, with the dryers all along the back wall. A Chinese man keeps an office and a fish tank with four big goldfish that look like they are meant to be solid orange but are partially colorless because of their poor conditions. That’s my impression anyway. Four fish the size of a hamburger patties in a 5-gallon tank with absolutely nothing else in it but scum? The fish were a nice addition to the laundry, but they could have used some pebbles, an aerator, and a weed or two. Despite this, I liked it better than the Plaza. There’s no card readers on the machines, which is good and bad. On the one hand, no failing magnetic strips. On the other hand, it does feel very primitive—anachronistic—to be plunking in 14 coins to run a cycle.
It was busy—a young Latina woman, an elderly woman who smelled bad folding men’s underwear, and two other people like myself—that is, my age and middle class. Not to sound conceited about it, but let’s face it, you go to a laundromat hoping that things won’t be too down-and-out in there. There are circumstances where decently well-off, working, sane, hygienic people need public pay laundry facilities, and you go hoping that it’s them who are in the place—not people vomiting, begging money, talking crazy talk to themselves or no one or to someone on the phone. (I have Brooklyn to thank for these opinions, by the way.)
No, it was a pleasant scene in the Water Dragon. I sat on a ledge in a sunny window, in view of my sudsing, spinning machines, and read a short story by Deborah Eisenberg. Jeopardy played in the background—college week, it seemed—and I listened and answered a few questions when I could. What is Lake Tahoe? The D.E. story is of course the one for class, “Rafe’s Coat,” which we’ll do next week. I was reading it again to learn the narrator’s name, which I somehow couldn’t recall from previous readings. Now I know why: her name is never used. The story talks a lot about a soap opera that Rafe’s girlfriend acts in. The whole cast of characters and their far-fetched dramas are relayed through the nameless protagonist’s watching of a few episodes. The story was as good as ever, and the final image was a real zinger. The higher floor of Sak’s is a higher spiritual level. And how like the stairs to heaven that escalator ascends!
My loads dried, and I stood at a folding table, filling my basket and bag. By this time, Jeopardy was over and a soap opera played. There it all was—the shirtless men, people walking into rooms and announcing themselves. “I’m back, Jake. I’m back to stay.” The outrageous plot lines. The dialogue! I actually heard a woman in bed say to a dazed-looking man: “I really hope you’re not married.” The man answered, “Me too.” He must have been struck with amnesia. That’s really going around in Park Lodge, the fictional town of today’s viewing.
In the D.E. story, the character is so engrossed in “This Brief Candle” (hilarious!) that when a commercial comes on, she sees it as action. “Suddenly a trio of children were determined to make their clothes filthy.” (I’m paraphrasing.) From that, we understand she’s seeing an ad for detergent, of course—the original soap of soap operas. If I’d perceived the same way the ads I’d seen that day in the Water Dragon, it would have been: “An Asian woman with a strange haircut standing under a train in Queens tells me that the laws of New York mean that after her illness her job was still there for her.” But, me as I am, instead perceive, thusly: “An Hispanic man stood on a restaurant floor in a dapper shirt and also to believe in the lines he was delivering about labor laws.”
I thought about soap operas and my own life being unlike one. Then, happily, I lugged my full basket and bag of clean, dry clothes on out of there, because—nice place, The Water Dragon, but it is after all a laundromat–one of those places, like dentists offices, that you go to for as short a visit as possible.
You don’t want to end up with your true colors faded.
