All laundromats are depressing. Even nice laundromats on the 45th floor of a hotel on a stylish street in Sydney, Australia is depressing.
I’ve been in Australia for a smidge over two months now and finally found a laundromat on the top floor of my hotel and finally got to wash all my clothes, except the stuff I’m wearing.
What a relief.
In Adelaide, I kept having to pull stuff out of my checked bag to get it under the 15 KG weight for checked bags.
C’mon folks. I have three months of clothing, two pair of shoes and a lot of whisky sample bottles in that bag. I kept pulling stuff out and putting it in my carry-on that already weighs more than the collective American Guilt because of my Macbook Mega Studio Pro laptop and it’s been crushing my spine for months. I kept pulling stuff out in the check bag chaos gate and it still weighed too much. I figured I’d be pulling out dirty socks and stuffing them in my pockets when the uptight lady in the crisp uniform just got tired of looking at me and used her badge to bypass the HAL 9000 and let my bag go into the system at 2 KG too heavy.
Which is great. The idea of putting dirty socks in my pockets was appalling.
So I was thrilled to find there was a laundromat on the top floor of my hotel. It’s also a residence so it’s there for the folks who live in the building.
There is also a rooftop pool, which sounds delightful, but it wasn’t. It was a 1-meter-deep square pool with a high, solid wall around it with green Astroturf decking. Not a swimming paradise with glass walls and cocktails being served by roof nymphs in hawaiian shirts. But it was too cold and windy to lounge, so I went back into the laundromat with my laptop to be doubly functional.
The laundromat is much better than most. There were windows on two sides looking down at a fabulous city with parks and monuments and the sea. Inspiring veneer over industrial washing machines and big rumbling dryers
Half the machines had depressing “out of order” signs scribbled in felt pen on sheets of paper and taped over their coin slots.
I sat down with my laptop but the wifi was in the same shape as the machines so I peroused the bookshelf full of books and bad DVD’s.
And there it was.
“Last Night of the Earth Poems.” by Charles Bukowski.
I shouldn’t have read it.
He is a master at beautifully painting misery. You feel his misery. You smell the flophouses and gutters and litter and flat beer and leftovers in the sink.
Not something you need in a laundromat.
Even a nice laundromat.
So that would make one wonder. Where SHOULD one read miserable, depressing Bukowski poems? Sitting on a beach in Maui with an umbrella drink? Would you really feel his words? Maybe a laundromat was the perfect place to read his work.
And maybe it wasn’t even the laundromat.
Maybe it was the time. At the end of two months of constantly traveling and listening and taking mental notes and writing every day and finding things nobody else saw. Even at this long, I feel like I just scratched the surface of this wonderful place and these wonderful people. I’ve got so much more to say and share and it’s very hard to get it all squeezed into each day. When you’re doing a thing, you can’t write about it and when you’re writing about a thing, you’re not doing it.
When I booked this foray into Australia, I figured that it’s so far away and expensive to get there that the longer the better. Loree, who has always had more sense than me said two months is plenty.
I scoffed. Compromise. Two and a half months. Then one distillery canceled at the last minute, leaving me in Sydney with no real plan and missing home.
Throw a laundromat and Charles Bukowski on top of that and a lesser being would have jumped off the tower.
But not me. When you work without a net, you learn to pivot and avoid the Bukowski Bottomless Pits of Despair, even when Kismet dumps his misery in your lap in a laundromat on the 45th floor.
So I did my laundry.
Sortof.
The clothes got clean, but not dry. The giant industrial dryers spun the clothes around in satisfying circles but after an hour, I pulled them out and they were cold and damp. No hot air. I saw the futility of waiting and packed their damp little souls into my big suitcase and rolled them down to my room and hung clothes on every surface and this morning, they’re dry.
I have been renewed. A short walk to a hotel lobby nearby with hot coffee and good Wi-Fi, and I feel like a new human.
And Crafty to the rescue. He’s got me booked at distilleries in Canberra, a four-hour train ride away. No more flights for me. I’ve got a gaggle of little sample whisky bottles to smuggle back into The Land of The Free and they’re coming with me no matter what someone in a uniform says.
I’ve earned these bottles, my good sir.
I survived Bukowski in a laundromat after not being home for two months. “Don’t touch my bags if you please, Mr. Customs Man…” I got my life to restart and great whisky to share with the people I love.
