This piece was initially published in Quarto’s Print 2021 edition.
Illustration by Zain Murdock
“DONT STOP MAKING POP, DJ BLOW MY SPEAKERS UP.”
He was singing at top volume and out of tune. And when our eyes met he paused long enough to say from on top of a washer:
“The cockroaches hate Kesha.”
I gave him my best “okay, sure” smile and inspected the machines. My clothes had long finished washing. They were just waiting in the damp dark.
The wise do laundry on Monday nights. Everybody does laundry on Sunday night which means open season on all machines, a scramble for clean underwear to start the new week.
Which was precisely why my laundry slot was meticulously penciled in right at 9:00pm on Monday between readings for classes and my existential crisis at 10:45.
But it had been a three day weekend.
There was no law in this land.
And it also didn’t help that half the dryers were always out of order. Maybe because college students were amnesic to lint, but more likely because the dryers had been around since the 80s. I imagined dryers in bell-bottom pants dancing disco and leaned against a washer an appropriate distance from his bobbing and his empty hamper.
He was also waiting for a dryer.
The closest dryer to being finished was 22 minutes and 24 minutes respectively. An ambiguous amount of time that was too short to justify returning to the eighth floor and risk losing my “place” but also not short enough that I didn’t instantly regret bringing any form of distraction.
“What do you do with the socks?” He asked no one in particular.
But there was no one else in the room but me.
“I’m sorry?”
“The socks.”
“The socks.”
“Yeah. The buy-one-leave-one for a stranger to find special.”
I paused. “There’s a pile squirreled away in the back of my underwear drawer.”
He laughed. “Me too. I just can’t throw them away.”
I nodded and we continued listening to the rolling tide of the washers and dryers.
“Have you ever worn any of them?”
Again he didn’t turn his head. He just talked to the air in front of him.
Yes, I have.
“No,” I replied.
He perched his chin in his hand. “I was late for class and there was this awesome Hello Kitty sock just calling my name. But when I got back to my room it was the most disorienting thing to see them.”
“You walked a mile in someone’s socks.”
“Right. Forget shoes, walk a mile in my socks.”
No one comes to the laundry room prepared.
I was wearing my ragged track and field tee from high school with a hole in the armpit and my period sweats. He was wearing basketball shorts and flip flops in February. The warmth of the laundry room kept the vulnerability at bay.
“I lay on top of my clothes after taking them out of the dryer,” I began.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“My mom used to scold me for doing it at home saying it would make the clothes dirty
when they’d just been washed.”
“Nah, fam. That doesn’t make sense. I bet she also did it when you weren’t looking.”
I smiled at the image of my mother laying in a pile of scattered clothes and used dryer sheets.
“Laundry hits me like an epiphany,” he said.
“How so?”
“When I get stuck in a problem set, it’s the perfect way to cool my head. But you don’t realize it until you
realize it.”
“I want him to only see my lacy pastel panties, not my period stained ones that crawled out from God
knows where. You know?” I admitted.
“Oh, yeah we all know.”
“Have you ever gotten dryered?” He asked.
“Dryered?”
“When someone takes your clothes out for you.”
“I mean if people don’t return to the dryers after an appropriate amount of time.”
“See but what’s considered appropriate? Ten minutes? Five minutes? Half an hour?”
“Okay, half an hour and you’re an asshole and deserve to be dryered.” I paused. “I always wonder what
happened to them.”
“The ones who don’t come back for their clothes?”
“Yeah. Did they get into a car crash? Chase their lover to the airport gates? Were they spirited away in
the Second Coming?”
“They most likely set an alarm for an hour nap and then slept past the alarm.” He said sheepishly.
“No!”
“Yes. I admit it. I am that asshole.”
“It’s so sad to see freshly washed clothes slowly cooling on top of a random washer.”
“Hey, that’s being kind. One time someone threw my clothes in the lost and found.”
“Oh, that’s evil.”
“I know right.”
“Sometimes I want to be put in for a cycle of delicate wash.”
“What does it even mean?”
“Who knows. It sounds nice.”
I gasped. “Something just brushed by my foot.”
“Come on.” He said. “Hop on to safety.”
I climbed the washer and mirrored his criss-cross-applesauce pose. The dryers spun and spun while we talked and now we were at T-3 minutes.
“Do you think they’ll be here right when the cycle ends?” He nodded at the pair of dryers.
“Highly unlikely. They probably slept past their alarms.”
“Or they might’ve been abducted by aliens.”
We laughed.
“Do the cockroaches actually hate Kesha?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“Me neither.”
“Even though we go to the same school and we live in the same building.”
“Do you usually do your laundry on Monday nights?”
“No.” He turned to me. “But I might reconsider.”
Eventually, the dryer stopped spinning. Eventually, we returned back to our rooms and set respective timers for 50ish minutes. Eventually, when I came back down he had already been dryered.
I sat vigil over his clothing for a few minutes.
And then a few more.
Eventually, all the warmth dissipated and I returned to my room.
It had been a three day weekend.
There was no law in this land.
Seowon (Angela) (she/her/hers) Lee is a senior at Columbia University and she’s not ready to graduate. She loves New York city but she would love it a little more if she was actually there. Her work is forthcoming in other literary magazines and most prominently on the notes app on her phone. She’s currently obsessed with honey citron tea and spring. She’s most reachable at @alee1004_ on instagram and welcomes random messages as long as you’re not a bot.