(Photo credit: Scootie@Flickr)

WHO THE EFF IS LEAVING THEIR WET CLOTHES IN THE ONLY WORKING WASHER?!

What about me? What about my needs? Do you know I only have one pair of athletic pants? Are you aware it’s cold here and I’ve thus felt compelled to wear these pants (in lieu of shorts) to the gym, like, five times this week? Do you know I’ve got exceptionally sweaty crevices? Do you understand my sweatiest crevice—which during fitness pursuits gives the foulest swamp, thick with mold and mildew and curdled stench, a run for its money—is situated, a split the size of the grand canyon, underneath the waistband on the ass-side of my pants? Forget crunches and squats—you do know that wearing the same pair of pants for five consecutive trips to 24 Hour Fitness is, in and of itself, an exercise … in OLFACTORY endurance?

How do you feel about that, dear-neighbor-who-can’t-be-bothered-to-empty-the-washer-after-the-rinse-cycle’s-complete? Does it help you to sleep well at night knowing that the god-awful odor snaking through our shared ventilation is not—as you’d assumed—the innocuous off-gas of a cluster of dead rats, but rather something infinitely more sinister? Would you, Maytag midwife, birth your white cotton sheets more quickly from the wash machine womb into the world of the waiting dryer if you knew that next to be washed was a pair of putrid spandex pants that could stand on their own without legs inside them? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, A-HOLE NEIGHBOR, WOULD YOU STOP BEING AN INCONSIDERATE TWAT LONG ENOUGH TO REMOVE YOUR CLOTHES FROM THE WASHER BEFORE THE MACHINE—WHICH I HEAR IS QUITE BULIMIC—MYSTERIOUSLY BARFS (PERHAPS WITH MY HELP) YOUR CLOROXED CONTENTS ALL OVER THE DIRTY TILED FLOOR?

…

Quiet and contemplative, these are the questions I sometimes ask myself (mostly on laundry day).

(And also: I sometimes ponder the cosmos, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the unfortunate exposure of my eyes to the dude next door’s shirtless, bony clavicle and his Rorschach blot plume of black, pubey-looking hair. Galloping across Dude’s chest in a tangled weave, I see horses … and posies … and people who should know better to keep their breast bone covered …. But I digress.)

—–

Two weeks from today I will have the entire contents of my current crappy apartment packed and ready to move to my (or rather “our”) new, not-so-crappy apartment where—omg!—I will have my very own washing machine. And then every day will be like Christmas. And I will be drunk off the fumes of power and Tide and bargain-bin dryer sheets. And when guests come to visit, they will say (of the Whirlpool appliance to which I am firmly affixed in an awkward embrace), If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it? To which I will respond, Fabulous idea! Cue up the organist! Buy me a bouquet! Book us two tickets for a honeymoon in Vegas. I hear the Liberace museum is *very* romantic this time of year.

But two weeks is not today. So for now, I can only do the thing of which hormonal teenage boys (and the similarly depraved) are adept. I fanticize. And furniture is my porn.

Even as the clot of cardboard I’ve gathered for packing sits untouched on my bedroom floor, in my head it’s urgent that I decorate a space I don’t yet inhabit. And so I spend hours—of which there are precious few remaining in this shabby little apartment where I found solace and self-sufficiency after my difficult divorce—researching, obsessing, making plans to spend what I’ve so carefully saved. Beveled mirrors, bamboo chairs, zig zag rugs and zebra pattern pillows—these are the trappings of a glamorous abode; and also, the smoke and mirrors of a glittering distraction.

Maybe the reason my packing thus far consists of three paperback books is, this place—the 600 square feet where I got my wings, did some healing, felt bad and then felt better—I just might miss it.

But only a little.

Hairy neighbor notwithstanding.

(Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan@Flickr)