IN THE KNICKERS OF TIME
by
Charlotte Claire Adams

The pair of knickers I am wearing is the cleanest pair I have. Sorting the colours from the whites, I ‘tsk-tsk’ and vow never to let my dirty washing reach this dire circumstance again. At least 2 weeks’ worth of living is enmeshed in these clothes: odours, stains, hair, DNA, weather. I insert four one dollar coins in each top-loader and empty the detergent sachet from the dispenser. The powder is like blue star-dust from heaven and smells like cheap potpourri.  I scatter it evenly around the wheel of clothes as the water gushes upon them. Yesterday is a tale of dirtiness; tomorrow a star-dust renaissance.

I wait, just as the other washing machines wait for laundry. I sit on one which is out of order and make a dent on its lid. ‘Wash and Dry at Own Risk’, reads a typed sign on the wall. The Laundromat is too heavenly and boring to be risky, I argue. It has white-wash walls, dove-white machines, stark white fluorescent lights and a blue globe, the same hue as the star-dust, hanging above me. Granny soap? Painted purity? Baby-blue bulb? I dangle my legs leaving a mark with my boots, feeling playful rather than spooked.

An indecipherable message is scrawled on the detergent dispenser. It is cursive and black and has nothing to do with suds, but I am appreciating its elegance against this room of hard edges. I am also wondering what it means; if it means that in the Laundromat there is a different language.

Like time. Apparently it’s 18 seconds to midday or midnight according to the white clock, and since it does not move I am concerned that the washing machines will take all the time they please. Of course I know it is daytime, even though the cloudy sky gives no hint of the hour, but if I am in a heaven of cleanliness, pondering the cryptic language in the blue mist, with time on my side and fresh knickers minutes away, then what is there to be wary of? I feel safe like a patient in a hospital, however in this clinical environment of blue space and frozen time, it startles me when the machines become outrageously loud.

All I could hear before was the hum of the highway, now a mere whisper as the colour load takes an aggressive turn. It doesn’t sound like the delicate setting I requested. Much less of a wash and more of a strangulation. I watch the machines, then eye the sign, curse, speculate over the machines again, that are unmoving yet emitting grinding groans of percussive sex; primitive and mechanic at once. I have never known of a white-good to express such attitude, and the possibility of it being something other than a washing machine, is highly probable. This is beyond animal. Someone inside could be having an epileptic fit. Four dollars, and I have created a monster. I think I’m in danger.

It remains still and bellows, followed by gushing, twisting and battering activity. Surely my clothes are running or are already murdered. Finally, a screaming flush sirens the end of the cycle. 

I am inclined to heroically reach for my clothes but fear having my arm munched to a pulp. These are the only knickers I have left, I mourn. It is precisely for this reason that I did not choose the Speed Queen front-loader glaring at me from the other end. It is industrial in size and could easily wash, rinse and spin-dry a dead body. The door has been left open, by a ghost, to be sure, because I am convinced that this eerie place, deceptively sparkling clean, is crawling with all things alien and supernatural alike. But I can’t say they didn’t warn me.

I wait for the whites. I pretend I am not trembling. I read the notices pinned to the cork-board, which aside from the graffiti and a sock is the only proof that others frequent the Laundromat. 

The Futsal Indoor Soccer club doesn’t interest me and I have missed Springdale’s Crafternoon held last month. I am unnerved by the Neighbourhood Watch posting juxtaposed with the 16 year-old babysitter’s flyer. It turns my curiosity into suspicion as the spinning whites rumble and howl. 
‘Happy is the Man Who Comes to Himself and Awakens’, declares a biblical sunset stamped with an OM. I wouldn’t mind awakening or being happier, and have always wanted to learn to meditate, so I make a mental note of the www.gnostic.com.au. But what intrigues me most is the advertisement for ‘Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences’ probing me to ‘Discover Another Dimension of Life’. According to the cork-board I have the opportunity to come into myself and awaken, while meditating, dreaming and astral travelling. My mind soars away from the tumult of the washing and already I feel initiated, full of magic and mysticism. I am in the waiting room of a secret matrix, I realise. Rows of doorways invite me into houses of possibilities. Why dry when I can fly in a parallel universe?
An eel of sodden washing is mangled at the base of the drum. Unpacking it in clumps, I ‘tsk-tsk’ and reflect on how pathetic it was to feel threatened by washing machines. All the clothes seem intact; the colours haven’t run. Only a kitten is entitled to fear machinery. Doing the laundry was never meant to be stressful, and with the relief that comes with a soak in the bath, I relax to the sound of rain merging with the hum of the highway.

Judging by a tsunami of rain-cloud, my wet clothes will not see sun before smelling of dank potpourri. The dryers are lined up at my service with their windows as big as bus steering-wheels. You could slide in for a cat-scan, or worse, be dried to a crust once the Speed Queen has churned you into compost. There’s a distinct quality of entrapment about them and I envisage the babysitter pressed against the foggy window, hands splayed, a frozen scream, moments away from spinning to her death on high heat. Not even the Neighbourhood Watch would hear her.

Or you could discover another dimension of life inside the dryer, not necessarily a nightmare. Who knows what my washing went through. They came out unscathed. I lean through one of the steel coffins. ‘Helloooooo?’ My voice sounds child-like and I giggle at the thought of how silly this would look to a bystander. I have enough coins for 2 rounds of drying and a wealth of curiosity, to know what it would be like to be a pair of knickers spun into a fragrant dry cleanliness. I think of the ecstasy of a twirling dervish, the trance like state induced by giddiness. I’ve been in a Gravitron countless times doing handstands, and without spewing. Who was it that once said ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained?’ I can kick the door open if things get out of hand.
I slip two dollars into the slot and crawl in like a mollusc reversing headfirst into a shell. I hit start with my toe, flicking the door shut in one motion. Nothing happens, until an ommm creeps into the cylinder.

Imagine crouching within someone’s third eye and you have grasped the sensation of a sock tumbling into a state of dryness - in this instance more like a state of purity, having been washed, rinsed and wringed of residue. I am flabbergasted at the science of the galaxy unfurling before me. I am floating backwards in a vortex, and from all angles my laundry is moving towards a digital-blue dot directly in front of me. The ommm, now akin to a schoolgirls’ choir, is an audible force which drives my singlets and stockings into the dot. 

A disintegrated tissue has dispersed in the fashion of a Milky Way and the atmosphere is humid with passing pockets of my perspiration and the occasional fart. And there’s the blue star-dust! I can see the Southern Cross, the Three Sisters and my star-sign, Scorpio. I give them the thumbs up.
Moreover, this eco-system of laundry has taken a certain historical bent as it illuminates my past; the past 2 weeks of dirt and grime released into the future. I recognise a translucent hand-print of Tom’s that marked my nightgown at the moment we broke up. It drifts away in the heat. I am moved to tears, and they too, evaporate towards the dot, which prompts me to wave goodbye with the knowledge that I will not see nor feel that hand-print again. If anyone was peering through the dryer right now, they too would shed a tear.

I don’t know what the dot is, but everything gets to go there except me. The midget-germs somersault with glee, cotton undulates like cosmic thread-worms, a shooting coin dazzles in my periphery. They are slowing down and the choir fades. In stillness, the last of the clothes flop over my head in a puff of potpourri. I want to go to the dot too, but have no coins to spare for another cycle.

Heavy with nostalgia, with a g-string on my head, I disembark the vortex and tumble to the ground. The g-string is tiny. We are both tiny. From where I sit the distance to the dryer’s door is over 2 meters high and the outside hum is deafening. But the achievement of washing my laundry, with an intimacy and profundity beyond what I paid for, overrides the possibility that I have permanently shrunk.  I feel activated, purified, enlightened.  Perhaps I am in heaven. The night has fallen and the street-lights glow, so I ‘tsk-tsk’ and hurriedly gather my clothes. The laundry shuts at midnight and according to the clock I have 17 seconds up my sleeve.