The weeks go by and my pile gets higher and higher, I try to figure a day when I can get out early, pack the car the night before, get my laundry done and not waste the day.
Well, I never pack the car the night before, though I always intend to, so at 6AM I sorting and packing. I have two baskets and a gigantic industrial sized laundry bag pinched from some restaurant I worked at years ago. Pending my laundry configuration, one was for whites, another for heavy stuff, and the last for light stuff. Then I collect all the empty hangers from my closets, I have it down to a science.
A quick shower later, I’m searching for something to wear, this is usually difficult since its laundry day for a reason. I load up the luv machine and I’m off to the laundromat.
I don’t have a washer and dryer in my house, but not for lack of space or funds, I actually like doing six to eight loads, wash, dry and fold in an hour and a half. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and the laundromat is a great place to write!
I frequent several laundromats one heading north towards the PA Turnpike, another heading south towards Philly, but my current favorite is in Woodbridge New Jersey, which is about an hour and ten minutes from my house. This isn’t as strange as it sounds. I try to pick a laundry day when there is a Bogan family function or a day when I have to hit the office on a weekend. Woodbridge NJ is central to both.
I think there needs to be a Starbucks-Laundromat-Café combo, maybe with late night bowling thrown in. Call it the Wash-N-Bowl, or Café Caffeine & Suds, I’ll keep working on it.
Once I get to the Laundromat I carry one basket in and check out the situation, it’s 7:30AM on a Sunday and the entire line of single load machines are empty, oh yes, this will be a good day!
Next I unload my car and make it obvious these eight machines are spoken for. Then I head over to the Shop-Rite to get some detergent and bleach. I’m a Liquid Tide w/ Bleach kind of guy, sure I’ve tried the others but my filth needs the good shit. I use Clorox, the Budweiser of bleach, why try anything else?
It has been said that I have a thing about laundry due to a website from a former online life, and now this here-to-fore quiet obsession, but looking down the laundry products aisle I am obviously not alone, twenty-six different brands of detergent alone with forty-seven permutations there of, and don’t even get me started on fabric softener!
After a quick stop at the in-store Dunkin Donuts, I’m back at the mat. I dump six quarters per machine, dropping the lids as I go. I feed the eighth machine, rush back to machine number one, lift the lid, add detergent and bleach as needed, down the line I go, leaving the lids up on the half full properly prepared machines.
Then I load. Careful not to overload, again I go down the line pushing the stinky clothes into the water and close the lids. I look proudly down the long line of swishing machines happily performing their life’s work.
I sit, sip my coffee, and write.
My previous web life? In 1996 I bought Bogan.com, mainly because I wanted to own the name before someone else bought it and someday I’d make something of it. My first idea for a website was to write columns about events of the day and musing about this or that, I guess it would have been a pre-blogosphere blog.
I toyed around with a few versions as I taught myself to write code before completely changing directions and coming up with “The Amazing Ironing Cam.†It was light-hearted, fun, and actually became mildly popular when the whole webcam craze hit in the late 90’s.
Sometime around Y2K I started journaling, at first it was pretty much stream of consciousness stuff and I journaled on and off for a few years. Occasionally something would come out that I thought was actually good. I’d read it over and think, “This is what I should be putting on a website. I do have something to say!†but I’d turn the page and keep writing.
I don’t know if it was crossing the forty years on the planet mark, or the few years of therapy, but eventually I decided I did have something to say and frankly, I didn’t care what anyone else thought, I was doing it for me.
Therapy you say? Yeah, I believe you gotta do what you gotta do to uncork the genie in your bottle. I began to study Zen philosophy and Eastern mysticism, I learned to turn my natural curiosity and quest for knowledge inward and found a spirituality that worked for me, I call it Vin-ism. Hey, I may be more spiritual but I’m still me.
Throughout this time I began to take my writing more seriously and just when I needed it, the universe led me to an amazing book by Natalie Goldberg, “Writing Down The Bones.†It was exactly what I was looking for! I didn’t know Zen writing even existed, but before I had gotten through twenty pages I began writing as a daily discipline in the spirit of Zen.
Mixing writing with my deepening understanding of self and the world around me was just the tonic I’d been seeking. The only thing missing was a bigger outlet, something beyond the pages of my journal, and here you are.
See, I said the Laundromat was a great place to write.
I deftly loaded my eight loads of wash into four big hot dryers, put in thirty-two minutes worth of quarters, and stared into the rhythm of the rolling socks and underwear.
I guess I’d dozed off because I was startled by a woman loading a dryer next to mine. She was smiling and laughing, so I quickly checked the corner of my mouth for drool, but realized she was just playing with her daughter.
I’d seen her there before. I’d always thought her demure features and pretty smile were alluring but never spoke to her. Today I did.
Standing up I went and got a Mountain Dew to clear out the cobwebs, returning I smoothly broke into laundromat chatter with the pretty thirty something Latina. I was glad she spoke English since my Spanish was learned in a restaurant kitchen and I doubted we’d be discussing recipes.
Her name was Marlena, she’s single and made it clear she was there every Sunday at nine. Her daughter was smiling at me seeming to say, “You’re flirting with my Mother, na, na na, na na, naâ€.
I’m a pretty charming guy generally, but I was on today! There’s something about the Laundromat that brings you to the essence of things, I was just being myself.
In Zen it’s called “woo wei†just so, and that was all it took, I usually try too hard, today I was just so.
“I’ll see you next week†I said as I went to load the clean folded clothes in my car.
“Nine O’clock†she said as if making a date.
“I’ll bring the coffee, I said†immediately running though my wardrobe in my head making sure I’d have enough dirty stuff to warrant a return trip so soon!
Peace,
Vinny
Vinny • 
1:28 pm • 
