Maybe Mama G was right
Maybe if I had been an Amazon, none of this would have happened in B-town, C-town, or anywhere else. Even in future tense.
But alas, I am a lesser lass and must suffer the meaty advances of street men across the country (though I am, strangely enough, spared this in Europe). It had been a while since the ill-swept curbs of B-town where witnessing the defecation of muttering, utter strangers was not out of the ordinary, where waiting to cross on a greenlight made one a captive audience of their body parts, ripped parts of speech (from limb to soiled limb), and the miasmic anger as endemic to their marked territories as the amassed putridity of life without running water.
It is not that I am not sympathetic to the homeless. But at least in B-town--I am not sure about this place since it is new--there are facilities, shelters, and services to provide food, housing, and medical aid if they were interested. There are lots of rules at those kinds of establishments, however, and some don't ever want to return to an institution again, sometimes very understandably. I don't think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is far off from the lying truth. Nevertheless, I don't think it gives anyone the right to assault another person, verbally or physically, or try to menace them into yielding money or other favours.
Somehow, I thought C-town would be different. Everyone I had met so far on the street had been quite civil and non-harrassing. Laundromats are apparently another arena of social acceptability all together.
It is BS that there are no laundry facilities in this house or within 1 full American mile. I don't mind the walking, but the thought of thick winter and the mere wastage of time waiting at a non-space out of paranoia and necessity (perhaps necessity engendered by paranoia) is discouraging for times to come. I do like clean clothes, however, and don't dispute the virtues of doing laundry. In fact, I have enjoyed the products of the relatively small labour (compared to old-fashioned beating of vestments on a stone by the chilly river till it stops moving in January) since age 11. Mama G put me on laundry duty young and I plan to do the same with my own brood one day. It is good for children to learn to be responsible for their own cleanliness and luxuries (such as fresh sheets) once they are old enough to do such things.
The irony in a way is that the text I'd brought to read for the duration of this sloshing and churning behind closed doors was a popular storyteller's tale (vis a vis composed for a reading audience tale) about Sariputra, Buddha's most dense and wildly popular-in-China student. It begins promisingly enough alluding to the subduing of demons, but then unspools a long obsequious sequence about the greatness of the Tang Taizong emperor. And then it's about the absolute blahblahness of the Diamond Sutra (surely, I am going to be carried off by mara for writing this), which sounds almost exactly like the absolute blahblahness of the Lotus Sutra found in the Lotus Sutra. Disappointingly, I have yet to happen upon any actual demons in the Dunhuang text (from the later Tang times, 7-9 century) as usually there is some magic swordfighting.
The first part of my laundry expedition was without much excitement (especially due to the shyness of the demons in "Sariputra"). I dropped off the clothes, traded three hours of my life for quarters, walked to a neighbourhood coffee shop, enjoyed a savoury tuna melt and a hot cup of not-bad green tea (whole leaves!) in a fancy cloth bag, and read about the magic flowers that rain down when the Buddha wants them to.
Returning to the laundromat to pop the clothes into the dryers, I thought it was strange that everyone else opted to put their clothes into the wall of dryers on the right. I loaded mine into the machines on the left because they were open, though there was a smelly pile of clothing emanating from one of the dryers in the corner, some articles of which lay in a crumpled heap on a table next to it. Paying not much mind to it, I slipped President Washingtons into the slot and sat down once again to delve into the greatness of "Sariputra". When the smaller load was done, I began to fold.
Shortly after, a man in a blinding aqua t-shirt appeared right in my face and nearly shouted, "Hi!"
"Hi," I said stonily, taken aback by his sudden appearance and the creeping realisation that the pile of clothes in the corner smelled the same as he.
"Spare me change for something to eat." His hairline was receding, but what was left had a troll-like, airborne tendency. He stood uncomfortably close and leant forward.
"No." I tried too look as emotionless as possible, and when he was about to press the matter further, added: "Please don't bother me".
He looked at me intently and circled around my back slowly, stopping at the open door of my dryer, one down from his. He examined the contents with great interest as I looked over at the couple staring at us from chairs by the entrace. Their faces said nothing. I wondered whether they would intervene should anything happen in this lonely place whose bright cafe-suited soundtrack mocked the empitiness all around. I stepped in front of my dryer to block his gaze and remove the rest of my clothes. Briskly. The man left abruptly then. His smell lingered.
When I began to feel relieved, I looked up again at the couple by the door. They were still looking at me. I noticed then that the man in the aqua shirt was peering in at all of us through the window, his arms raised and face pressed against the glass. I moved all of my things to the machines on the right side, even the second load that was not yet finished. New quarters flowed like rivers into the mouths of the machines and I felt hot. It must have been the heat of the dryers.
When folding the rest of the wash, the man came back in and, while he did not walk towards me (now on the right side of the room) again, he glanced over. Eventually, he decided to fall upon another single woman. I did not hear what was said and was somewhat relieved, but I saw that she was all right. After presumably not being able to extort money from her either, the man reached into his clothing pile in the corner dryer and announced to the large room: "I'm gonna change my socks now. Yeah, changin' my socks! Changin' my socks!" The odours continued to waft over as his waved his bits and pieces around.
I only looked at my own clothes and once more, the implacable couple in the corner. When I went to speak to them later, they were both unperturbed by it all--the harassment of two single girls, the leering, the shouting. Was I overreacting? No, because the creep tried to intimidate me with his physical proximity and persistence, and leered at my clothes, all intimates and camisoles, in the dryer at length. The latter was probably the most disconcerting--if I hadn't been there while the clothes were drying, would I have found something missing from or added to the loads? I shuddered to think of either outcome.
In the interest of saving time, getting out of the way a mile-long trek in the growing darkness, and avoiding further contact with the man, who seemed to come and go from the place as if it were his own living room, I packed all the clothes, even the slightly damp items, and headed out, but not before stopping to speak to the couple by the door.
They looked very much like each other, though it's clear they are from different clans: dowdy hiker types who had healthy body hair images and read mass market paperbacks. Maybe they've seen it all at this kind of place. They'd been there once before and had never seen this man. Maybe they just moved here from New York or B-town.
No time or heart to appreciate the falling light on New England maples or the greenness growing in gardens and on sidewalks, I marched home with two evenly stacked bags and tried to dream up a solution.
I have neglected to mention that I did telephone the laundromat/drycleaning owner in between the man's ins and outs, and left a message. I am not sure how much good that has done and even less convinced that my landlady's suggestion to phone the police would have accomplished anything, for me and the other customers, the laundromat, or the man, in the long run.
It would be nice if I could just avoid these encounters with creepy, pervy people. I am also tired of moving around months at a time, renting costly crappy apartments where things either don't work or fall off, shooting off in random directions while seeming to pursue trajectories that go where my heart doesn't. A remedy is in the works, but like everything else, including laundry, it takes much patience and time.
In other news, went for a swim at the luxuriously spacious-laned and illumined Olympic-sized pool with W the other evening. Very beautiful place, beautifully unhurried swim--it was almost like being back in my little runabout waterhole in California, but it was a bit cooler, the company more professional (lifeguards and some kind of team enthusiast), and I did get the chills some hours later. But will try to do the same thing again next week as a 1/2 hour of nonstop laps did not leave me the least bit sore or tired. Rather, it was quite elating and relaxing. There is nothing like floating on one's back and watching the clouds or rafters move off the horizon.
Mom and Far are in Weihai this week and will press onto other parts of the old country, one of them on an informal lecture circuit and family-rousing tour, and the other a round of business accompaniments on the golf links. Rather revolting, golfing in China these days, but apparently such a part of the vulgarian "culture" that one cannot afford to be too moralistic for it. When Mom said to one of those "delegation" members over dinner last month: "Call me old-fashioned, but I do feel sorry for the inequality of the boom experienced by farmers who had their ancestral lands seized by local government without compensation so that golf courses can be built. Some of them do get jobs at the links, but most don't and these new courses have facilities more luxurious in terms of human service and grooming than even places abroad. What a contrast!"
The head of the delegation snorted witout missing a beat: "Which country in the world doesn't have an economically divided society?" I will always remember this man for this remark and for his insistence that the "international" style of eating chicken was not in fact, via aid of knife, fork, chopsticks, or fingers. Rather... he demonstrated the proper decorum by personally ripping up his serviette into inch-wide shreds and stubbornly (and clumsily) wrapping these around the bony parts of the drumsticks like a sort of... legwarmer (?) Then, the warm-hearted and worldly man proceeded to hand out these drumsticks to us around the table. The paper fibers stuck to the skin uncannily well. Mercifully, I wasn't hungry.
Will see the wonderful 49Up documentary tomorrow. Wonder if I can work in "Little Miss Sunshine" as well as wushu. Busy day for leisure and Sariputra. Also, YouTube has "Wonder Years" episodes! This show was so good. Ben Stein has the best consistent cameo as a depressed science teacher fond of showing films of apocalypse-worthy natural phenomena (raging volcanoes and massive floes dropping off from ancient polar caps) while spicing them with Wagnerian sound effects triggered by Ozian buttons and levers, and simultaneously narrating in his gleefully monotone drawl about the inevitability of death and destruction for ancient and modern man. I want to hire this guy for future projects. Any project. I'll even take out a bank loan.
How did I grow up without "The Wonder Years"? I am much inspired by its thematic breadth and intelligent sentimentality.
But alas, I am a lesser lass and must suffer the meaty advances of street men across the country (though I am, strangely enough, spared this in Europe). It had been a while since the ill-swept curbs of B-town where witnessing the defecation of muttering, utter strangers was not out of the ordinary, where waiting to cross on a greenlight made one a captive audience of their body parts, ripped parts of speech (from limb to soiled limb), and the miasmic anger as endemic to their marked territories as the amassed putridity of life without running water.
It is not that I am not sympathetic to the homeless. But at least in B-town--I am not sure about this place since it is new--there are facilities, shelters, and services to provide food, housing, and medical aid if they were interested. There are lots of rules at those kinds of establishments, however, and some don't ever want to return to an institution again, sometimes very understandably. I don't think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is far off from the lying truth. Nevertheless, I don't think it gives anyone the right to assault another person, verbally or physically, or try to menace them into yielding money or other favours.
Somehow, I thought C-town would be different. Everyone I had met so far on the street had been quite civil and non-harrassing. Laundromats are apparently another arena of social acceptability all together.
It is BS that there are no laundry facilities in this house or within 1 full American mile. I don't mind the walking, but the thought of thick winter and the mere wastage of time waiting at a non-space out of paranoia and necessity (perhaps necessity engendered by paranoia) is discouraging for times to come. I do like clean clothes, however, and don't dispute the virtues of doing laundry. In fact, I have enjoyed the products of the relatively small labour (compared to old-fashioned beating of vestments on a stone by the chilly river till it stops moving in January) since age 11. Mama G put me on laundry duty young and I plan to do the same with my own brood one day. It is good for children to learn to be responsible for their own cleanliness and luxuries (such as fresh sheets) once they are old enough to do such things.
The irony in a way is that the text I'd brought to read for the duration of this sloshing and churning behind closed doors was a popular storyteller's tale (vis a vis composed for a reading audience tale) about Sariputra, Buddha's most dense and wildly popular-in-China student. It begins promisingly enough alluding to the subduing of demons, but then unspools a long obsequious sequence about the greatness of the Tang Taizong emperor. And then it's about the absolute blahblahness of the Diamond Sutra (surely, I am going to be carried off by mara for writing this), which sounds almost exactly like the absolute blahblahness of the Lotus Sutra found in the Lotus Sutra. Disappointingly, I have yet to happen upon any actual demons in the Dunhuang text (from the later Tang times, 7-9 century) as usually there is some magic swordfighting.
The first part of my laundry expedition was without much excitement (especially due to the shyness of the demons in "Sariputra"). I dropped off the clothes, traded three hours of my life for quarters, walked to a neighbourhood coffee shop, enjoyed a savoury tuna melt and a hot cup of not-bad green tea (whole leaves!) in a fancy cloth bag, and read about the magic flowers that rain down when the Buddha wants them to.
Returning to the laundromat to pop the clothes into the dryers, I thought it was strange that everyone else opted to put their clothes into the wall of dryers on the right. I loaded mine into the machines on the left because they were open, though there was a smelly pile of clothing emanating from one of the dryers in the corner, some articles of which lay in a crumpled heap on a table next to it. Paying not much mind to it, I slipped President Washingtons into the slot and sat down once again to delve into the greatness of "Sariputra". When the smaller load was done, I began to fold.
Shortly after, a man in a blinding aqua t-shirt appeared right in my face and nearly shouted, "Hi!"
"Hi," I said stonily, taken aback by his sudden appearance and the creeping realisation that the pile of clothes in the corner smelled the same as he.
"Spare me change for something to eat." His hairline was receding, but what was left had a troll-like, airborne tendency. He stood uncomfortably close and leant forward.
"No." I tried too look as emotionless as possible, and when he was about to press the matter further, added: "Please don't bother me".
He looked at me intently and circled around my back slowly, stopping at the open door of my dryer, one down from his. He examined the contents with great interest as I looked over at the couple staring at us from chairs by the entrace. Their faces said nothing. I wondered whether they would intervene should anything happen in this lonely place whose bright cafe-suited soundtrack mocked the empitiness all around. I stepped in front of my dryer to block his gaze and remove the rest of my clothes. Briskly. The man left abruptly then. His smell lingered.
When I began to feel relieved, I looked up again at the couple by the door. They were still looking at me. I noticed then that the man in the aqua shirt was peering in at all of us through the window, his arms raised and face pressed against the glass. I moved all of my things to the machines on the right side, even the second load that was not yet finished. New quarters flowed like rivers into the mouths of the machines and I felt hot. It must have been the heat of the dryers.
When folding the rest of the wash, the man came back in and, while he did not walk towards me (now on the right side of the room) again, he glanced over. Eventually, he decided to fall upon another single woman. I did not hear what was said and was somewhat relieved, but I saw that she was all right. After presumably not being able to extort money from her either, the man reached into his clothing pile in the corner dryer and announced to the large room: "I'm gonna change my socks now. Yeah, changin' my socks! Changin' my socks!" The odours continued to waft over as his waved his bits and pieces around.
I only looked at my own clothes and once more, the implacable couple in the corner. When I went to speak to them later, they were both unperturbed by it all--the harassment of two single girls, the leering, the shouting. Was I overreacting? No, because the creep tried to intimidate me with his physical proximity and persistence, and leered at my clothes, all intimates and camisoles, in the dryer at length. The latter was probably the most disconcerting--if I hadn't been there while the clothes were drying, would I have found something missing from or added to the loads? I shuddered to think of either outcome.
In the interest of saving time, getting out of the way a mile-long trek in the growing darkness, and avoiding further contact with the man, who seemed to come and go from the place as if it were his own living room, I packed all the clothes, even the slightly damp items, and headed out, but not before stopping to speak to the couple by the door.
They looked very much like each other, though it's clear they are from different clans: dowdy hiker types who had healthy body hair images and read mass market paperbacks. Maybe they've seen it all at this kind of place. They'd been there once before and had never seen this man. Maybe they just moved here from New York or B-town.
No time or heart to appreciate the falling light on New England maples or the greenness growing in gardens and on sidewalks, I marched home with two evenly stacked bags and tried to dream up a solution.
I have neglected to mention that I did telephone the laundromat/drycleaning owner in between the man's ins and outs, and left a message. I am not sure how much good that has done and even less convinced that my landlady's suggestion to phone the police would have accomplished anything, for me and the other customers, the laundromat, or the man, in the long run.
It would be nice if I could just avoid these encounters with creepy, pervy people. I am also tired of moving around months at a time, renting costly crappy apartments where things either don't work or fall off, shooting off in random directions while seeming to pursue trajectories that go where my heart doesn't. A remedy is in the works, but like everything else, including laundry, it takes much patience and time.
In other news, went for a swim at the luxuriously spacious-laned and illumined Olympic-sized pool with W the other evening. Very beautiful place, beautifully unhurried swim--it was almost like being back in my little runabout waterhole in California, but it was a bit cooler, the company more professional (lifeguards and some kind of team enthusiast), and I did get the chills some hours later. But will try to do the same thing again next week as a 1/2 hour of nonstop laps did not leave me the least bit sore or tired. Rather, it was quite elating and relaxing. There is nothing like floating on one's back and watching the clouds or rafters move off the horizon.
Mom and Far are in Weihai this week and will press onto other parts of the old country, one of them on an informal lecture circuit and family-rousing tour, and the other a round of business accompaniments on the golf links. Rather revolting, golfing in China these days, but apparently such a part of the vulgarian "culture" that one cannot afford to be too moralistic for it. When Mom said to one of those "delegation" members over dinner last month: "Call me old-fashioned, but I do feel sorry for the inequality of the boom experienced by farmers who had their ancestral lands seized by local government without compensation so that golf courses can be built. Some of them do get jobs at the links, but most don't and these new courses have facilities more luxurious in terms of human service and grooming than even places abroad. What a contrast!"
The head of the delegation snorted witout missing a beat: "Which country in the world doesn't have an economically divided society?" I will always remember this man for this remark and for his insistence that the "international" style of eating chicken was not in fact, via aid of knife, fork, chopsticks, or fingers. Rather... he demonstrated the proper decorum by personally ripping up his serviette into inch-wide shreds and stubbornly (and clumsily) wrapping these around the bony parts of the drumsticks like a sort of... legwarmer (?) Then, the warm-hearted and worldly man proceeded to hand out these drumsticks to us around the table. The paper fibers stuck to the skin uncannily well. Mercifully, I wasn't hungry.
Will see the wonderful 49Up documentary tomorrow. Wonder if I can work in "Little Miss Sunshine" as well as wushu. Busy day for leisure and Sariputra. Also, YouTube has "Wonder Years" episodes! This show was so good. Ben Stein has the best consistent cameo as a depressed science teacher fond of showing films of apocalypse-worthy natural phenomena (raging volcanoes and massive floes dropping off from ancient polar caps) while spicing them with Wagnerian sound effects triggered by Ozian buttons and levers, and simultaneously narrating in his gleefully monotone drawl about the inevitability of death and destruction for ancient and modern man. I want to hire this guy for future projects. Any project. I'll even take out a bank loan.
How did I grow up without "The Wonder Years"? I am much inspired by its thematic breadth and intelligent sentimentality.
posted by greenyew at 4:28 PM
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