Strange Intimacy

My husband and I moved into our current apartment a few weeks ago, and while I love its many windows, abundant light and bright, cheerful wall paint, it comes with one annoyance - no washing machine in the building. For the first time in my life, when I need clean clothes, I have to walk a few blocks away to a public laundromat and sort through my smalls in front of strangers.

So that is what I did last night. My hubby was busy working so I trooped down to the laundromat with our little grandma trolley full of dirty clothes and a good book to read while I sat on the machines waiting.

Maybe it's just me, but public laundromats are kind of creepy. Last night I was finding it very odd to sit and watch a complete stranger's underwear go round and round in the dryer. I started trying to imagine the kind of person who would wear orange polka-dotted socks and pink striped underpants. (Turns out it's a young 20-something girl with short hair pulled back into two pigtails. That was probably an easy guess.)

I cannot for the life of me bring myself to drop off my laundry and go home to wait like some people do. How can they leave such personal belongings in full view of strangers and un-babysat? What if someone with a weird undergarment fetish comes in and rifles through their things? Or, worse still, makes off with something?

Call me old-fashioned if you want, but it seems like a personal violation to have people observe my underwear, watch me sort socks and separate things that can go in the dryer versus things to be hung up. Then again, I also find it shocking that people have such private conversations on their cell phones in public places and think nothing of it (note to loud cell phone talkers out there: if you don't want strangers to stare at you when you're on the phone, don't have a loud conversation about your recent doctor's appointment on the bus).

Perhaps it's because some pieces of technology feel like they create a private space around you, so that you forget that others can see into that space. I'm also willing to bet that some people are fully aware of their exhibitionism and simply don't care, or even encourage it. After all, reality television continues to grow in popularity despite the overabundance of shows about nothing. It seems that people simply like to observe other people going about their lives.

Perhaps we are naturally all voyeurs in one way or another. After all, I admittedly was watching the laundromat girl's underwear tumble dry for a good 10 minutes. But when she came back to claim her dry clothes, I did feel guilty and ashamed, as though I had just escaped being caught doing something reprehensible. Some part of me did think that looking at someone else's underwear was perverted and wrong, even though it was too small a part to make me look away.

I guess I just believe that some things are meant to be kept private and not aired in public. And my underwear falls firmly into that category. I will never again take an in-house washing machine for granted.