global politics and irony find me at the laundry
At the laundromat down the street just now, sitting outside reading the late-arriving Sunday New York Times, waiting for my last spin cycle to finish so I could transfer everything to the dryer and relax for another forty minutes, I went in to check the status of my cycles and noticed someone had put some sheets in my white laundry basket. I was annoyed.
Actually, I was already a little annoyed because the place was packed and there were four kids, siblings ranging from two to eight, running around wreaking havoc -- and if ever I can stand kids, it's *not* when they're wreaking havoc. I was feeling a little frazzled by all that and also feeling territorial about my chair outside with my five-dollar paper beside it and, feeling pulled in several directions, I noted the sheets in my basket, noted that my machine had a few minutes left on it, and went back out to my chair to regroup.
I didn't need my basket until my clothes were done spinning anyway, I reasoned, so I would wait and then reclaim my basket as graciously as possible. I'm sure whomever had dumped their sheets in a basket clearly not their own was probably feeling just as frazzled as me. When I went back in, I saw a man holding the sheets and talking into a cell phone. He was short and dark brown and speaking a language I didn't recognize. I thought he was maybe from North Africa -- maybe Egypt or Ethiopia -- he craned his neck this way and that and looked befuddled, the sheets poised in his hand above my basket. But then he dropped them back in and walked away. Hmm. My machine still wasn't finished, so I went back out. At least I knew whose sheets they were and when I went back the last time, I'd just tell him it was my basket and ask him to take his sheets, rather than dumping them out unceremoniously on the table. I was feeling very magnanimous.
Fortuitously, when my machine was finally done, the sheets were gone, so I set about transferring my wet clothes to the dryer and putting in the money. A few minutes later, when I emerged from the laundry, there was the man. Sitting in my chair. So it wasn't *my* chair, with *my* name on it -- it had my newspaper beside it and there was another chair on the other side of the door with no one's paper beside it he could've taken. Maybe he hadn't seen it? Whatever. He was on his cell phone still and I walked over, bent down, retrieved my paper, and moved to the other chair.
I proceeded to read several articles about the Middle East including one that detailed the woman-phobic writings of one of the 9/11 hijackers who described how disgusted he was by the American women he met when he was in college in Colorado as a young man. The author of the article noted that this feeling would not surprise anyone who had spent any time in the Middle East. So, with my mind now effectively marinating in that reminder of the misogyny that can coincide Islam, I glanced back up at my little basket stealing friend through new eyes.
Why had he used my basket? Why had he taken my chair? I saw him suddenly as a transplanted man from a harsh, patriarchal culture. Did he take my basket and my chair because I am a woman and don't matter? Worse yet, because I am a disgusting, American woman whose values, whose body, whose very presence in the world is repugnant to him? Am I crazy for wondering these things? It's not as if these thoughts don't exist in people's minds. It's not as though I'm making this up. Suddenly, I was less inclined to see him as a frazzled, foreign guy in a busy, American laundromat, maybe confused, maybe out of his depth, maybe just tired -- and more inclined to see him as man who doesn't value women, a man who doesn't care if he takes my seat or my basket, a man not unlike a lot of men, but backed by a culture (I imagined) that wholeheartedly supported his attitude against women. I made quite an enemy of him.
I also checked myself at every stop and reminded myself that something of this little mental exercise was ridiculous and dangerous. I reminded myself, also, that even if he was as misogynistic as I could imagine him to be, he was still a foriegn, brown-skinned person in *my* country and I had no right to see myself as any kind of victim of his misogyny. I'm white, I speak the language, I am at home here and I have privileges here that he will never have. And for Christ's sake, all he did was put sheets in my basket for five-minutes and sit in a chair I was no longer using.
I was still mulling all this over as I was leaving. I noticed him from my car, standing in the laundromat in front of a wheeled cart. A white woman was standing on the other side of the cart and though I couldn't hear them, it was clear from their faces and her gestures that it was a cart she had been using and he had taken it from in front of her machine. He smiled, broadly, and gave a palms-out gesture of apology and backed away as she, also smiling, took the cart. Not such a sinister interaction and I was happy to think, as I backed my car out of my space, that he was probably a nice enough guy who was just new at the laundromat-scene.
And the irony? After all my foriegnizing of him in my misogyny-laden fantasy, I noticed the license plate of his white van as I pulled away. He was from North Carolina, my home state and pretty unusual out here in Oregon. Clearly he was not originally from North Carolina, but niether am I. So we're even.
Actually, I was already a little annoyed because the place was packed and there were four kids, siblings ranging from two to eight, running around wreaking havoc -- and if ever I can stand kids, it's *not* when they're wreaking havoc. I was feeling a little frazzled by all that and also feeling territorial about my chair outside with my five-dollar paper beside it and, feeling pulled in several directions, I noted the sheets in my basket, noted that my machine had a few minutes left on it, and went back out to my chair to regroup.
I didn't need my basket until my clothes were done spinning anyway, I reasoned, so I would wait and then reclaim my basket as graciously as possible. I'm sure whomever had dumped their sheets in a basket clearly not their own was probably feeling just as frazzled as me. When I went back in, I saw a man holding the sheets and talking into a cell phone. He was short and dark brown and speaking a language I didn't recognize. I thought he was maybe from North Africa -- maybe Egypt or Ethiopia -- he craned his neck this way and that and looked befuddled, the sheets poised in his hand above my basket. But then he dropped them back in and walked away. Hmm. My machine still wasn't finished, so I went back out. At least I knew whose sheets they were and when I went back the last time, I'd just tell him it was my basket and ask him to take his sheets, rather than dumping them out unceremoniously on the table. I was feeling very magnanimous.
Fortuitously, when my machine was finally done, the sheets were gone, so I set about transferring my wet clothes to the dryer and putting in the money. A few minutes later, when I emerged from the laundry, there was the man. Sitting in my chair. So it wasn't *my* chair, with *my* name on it -- it had my newspaper beside it and there was another chair on the other side of the door with no one's paper beside it he could've taken. Maybe he hadn't seen it? Whatever. He was on his cell phone still and I walked over, bent down, retrieved my paper, and moved to the other chair.
I proceeded to read several articles about the Middle East including one that detailed the woman-phobic writings of one of the 9/11 hijackers who described how disgusted he was by the American women he met when he was in college in Colorado as a young man. The author of the article noted that this feeling would not surprise anyone who had spent any time in the Middle East. So, with my mind now effectively marinating in that reminder of the misogyny that can coincide Islam, I glanced back up at my little basket stealing friend through new eyes.
Why had he used my basket? Why had he taken my chair? I saw him suddenly as a transplanted man from a harsh, patriarchal culture. Did he take my basket and my chair because I am a woman and don't matter? Worse yet, because I am a disgusting, American woman whose values, whose body, whose very presence in the world is repugnant to him? Am I crazy for wondering these things? It's not as if these thoughts don't exist in people's minds. It's not as though I'm making this up. Suddenly, I was less inclined to see him as a frazzled, foreign guy in a busy, American laundromat, maybe confused, maybe out of his depth, maybe just tired -- and more inclined to see him as man who doesn't value women, a man who doesn't care if he takes my seat or my basket, a man not unlike a lot of men, but backed by a culture (I imagined) that wholeheartedly supported his attitude against women. I made quite an enemy of him.
I also checked myself at every stop and reminded myself that something of this little mental exercise was ridiculous and dangerous. I reminded myself, also, that even if he was as misogynistic as I could imagine him to be, he was still a foriegn, brown-skinned person in *my* country and I had no right to see myself as any kind of victim of his misogyny. I'm white, I speak the language, I am at home here and I have privileges here that he will never have. And for Christ's sake, all he did was put sheets in my basket for five-minutes and sit in a chair I was no longer using.
I was still mulling all this over as I was leaving. I noticed him from my car, standing in the laundromat in front of a wheeled cart. A white woman was standing on the other side of the cart and though I couldn't hear them, it was clear from their faces and her gestures that it was a cart she had been using and he had taken it from in front of her machine. He smiled, broadly, and gave a palms-out gesture of apology and backed away as she, also smiling, took the cart. Not such a sinister interaction and I was happy to think, as I backed my car out of my space, that he was probably a nice enough guy who was just new at the laundromat-scene.
And the irony? After all my foriegnizing of him in my misogyny-laden fantasy, I noticed the license plate of his white van as I pulled away. He was from North Carolina, my home state and pretty unusual out here in Oregon. Clearly he was not originally from North Carolina, but niether am I. So we're even.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 3:28 PM
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