My washing machine has started generating an error code which, when I type into a search engine, I learn could be related to several things I do not understand or bother to try. The idea that the washer might be broken doesn’t bother me. I am supposed to vacate the deli in eight weeks’ time, and it was T who forced the washer into a crevice in the deli’s backyard like that. When I first found out about the deli’s ending, I would wake up frequently in the middle of the night and mull over the washing machine’s situation, and how I might go about retrieving it. Though, now that it is defective, I can leave it at the deli along with all the other things I associate with him. I’ve been frequenting the new laundry mat since the error code appeared, the new-old one at the top of my street. The chairs at the mat are uncomfortable and the room cold, but still, I enjoy my time at the mat. I feel very much a part of society here.
At Officeworks this afternoon, I find myself sifting through the assortment of discounted items around the printing station. These bins, I know, have been placed strategically to will people waiting here like I am to buy. But if I were to in fact pick up something this close to the counter and pay for it, I would be participating in what my Behavioural Economics teacher calls ‘impulse purchasing’. Officeworks is attempting to infiltrate a split-second moment of weakness in which my rational decision making subsides. It is a strategy my own mother has been known to succumb to as her pantry is bursting with discounted, close-to-the-counter-items nobody, not even her, desires to eat or even try. Though she buys them all the same, she always has and, at the age of sixty-three, we have given up trying to change her on this. It takes me a while to discern I am staring at calendars, wall planners, and journals for the new year. I pull my phone from my pocket to verify it really is the September I think it to be. It is displays like these that make me feel like something contained in the future imperfect is going to consume me. My mind wanders to Roberta, my new therapist, who is admirably trying to help me think and plan less, and just exist. I take a photo of the display with the intention of asking her, at 11am next Wednesday, how I am supposed to resist living two or three months ahead when they are forever pulling us forward, demanding we be prepared.
The water leaking from underneath The Man’s sink is not insignificant. He is quick in locating the source of the issue and tapes up the sink so there is a green X suspended over the basin like a spider web. A reminder intended for me, I think, not to use it. When I visit again a few days later, he has not only fixed the plumbing issue underneath but installed an entirely new sink and tap as well as an expanded drying area. He says he found it for a bargain online, that it is German, and designer. I run my hand along the shiny metal. And you did this all yourself? I ask, unbelieving. I fall on the bruise-coloured couch opposite the kitchen to admire it all. From where I sit, the new symmetrical sink with the handsome tap in the centre reminds me of an eagle suspended in the sky. I consider asking The Man to decipher the code on my washer but cannot bring myself to do so at this moment. Instead, I occupy myself with all of his things, trying to gauge what it will look like when our lives merge in November.
David, the student masseuse, advises I should book in for next week and, while I’m at it, the week after that too. You have years of tension built up there, he says gazing at my trapezii, which are throbbing from all the attention. Sometimes I see the tension manifest visibly in the mirror, I say. What used to be a smooth skateboard ramp emerging from either side of my neck now has a large growth emerging from it. I tell David he is my last resort before I start yoga which, I explain to him, I am reluctant to begin for reasons I can’t presently articulate. It’s a little cultish, don’t you think? He tells me he sees this all the time while massaging his smooth, growth-free trapezii. In fact, it’s the most common presentation, he says. I tap my card and fill out a critical appraisal form which allows the appointment to cost only thirty-five dollars. The large waiting room is full of people -of Matts and Sams and Nicks and Sarahs- waiting patiently for their turn to be rubbed by a student masseuse. I run my eyes over them all sitting still and silent, recognising they are sitting in a significant degree of discomfort. Significant enough, at least, to bring them here today.
My bladder is about to give at the laundry mat this morning. The machine containing my clothes says it has thirteen minutes of drying to go. Rain has been falling all morning, it will fall all day. I ding the bell and a tall, bald man appears and agrees to let me use the bathroom. When I return, he is still at the counter and so, I serve him a question because he looks like he’d like one. He tells me he took over The Mat six months ago at a reduced price. At first, I didn’t know what I was thinking, it was bleeding money, he says. He apologises for the state of the bathroom, explaining that he’s working on the building from front to back. I ask if he has been in the laundry business long. He laughs as if I had said something genuinely funny and shakes his head. He goes on to tell me he was at a crossroads in his life after spending two years in and out of the hospital in the aftermath of a hideous motorcycle accident. The accident robbed him of his capacity to continue in his previous role as an engineer of some sort. He says he looked at himself long and hard in the mirror and thought, I could be someone who doesn’t work, who lives off the people’s taxes, or I could start again something different. He says this to me while holding a checked business shirt taut. I ask him how it’s all going, and he begins folding the shirt in an immaculate way I would like to learn how to do. Thanks to this Wash, Dry, Fold service I’ve started, it’s going well. Or at least better than before, he says. It’s all the young professionals living and working in this area who don’t have the time. I was in that rat race and spent a lot of time resenting it, he says. Now I’m so grateful it exists.
The instructor, Kahlani, makes a large point of welcoming me to the practice. As she gives me a tour of the studio, I become distracted by a couple pulling runners on. They are flushed from the advanced hot class that has just finished and are discussing a zucchini noodle maker, which they will use tonight. The couple, I realise, are the same people who sat next to the Man and I at Black Gold café on Saturday. I distinctly remember the way they spoke about their salaries and respective quotas while The Man and I discussed the flavour of the jam between us. Alright hun, you’re good to go, Kahlani says. At first, the heat of the yoga room slaps me in the face. I quickly spot my university tutor enclosed in child’s pose and feel the room take on an entirely new hue. There are little lines, upside down L’s, to indicate where your mat should be. Though, when I look closer, I see they are not lines but small L-shaped sentences that read, You are Enough! This is a mental exercise as much as it is the body, Kahlani says. You must try not to think of anything and when you do, be sure to let the thought leave as quickly as it arrived. Let the thoughts, she says, float by you like clouds. I see the contents of the week that has just been and the week in front of me move by in gusts. The more I try to think of nothing the harder the task becomes. I open my eyes to look around while maintaining my head still so as not to let Kahlani know I am disobeying her one request. Everyone has their eyes very shut and, as far as I can tell, are achieving relaxation. I return my gaze inward, feeling the collective rise and fall of the many chests in this room. If I were to guess, I’d say there are forty chests in total.
While the chicken comes to a boil, I fall on the couch and scroll Airtasker for replies to my advertisement regarding an end-of-lease clean. I experience a rush of dopamine when I see the green number eight illuminated over the small letter symbol. Several notifications, piled on top of one another, read: People are lining up to do your task ‘Clean my 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom apartment’ It’s time to make a decision- who will you choose? The Man says I ought to do it myself. But I replied I have much more important things to do, which I’m starting to see I do not. I cannot hear the chicken bouncing around the saucepan yet, so I scroll the Airtasker feed properly for the first time. It is extraordinary how many people want jobs done, even more extraordinary that people are lining up to do them. The jobs are all ordinary variations of the same thing. As I scroll deep into yesterday, the day before, and last week, a sensation washes over me a lot like when I take the bins out, fill out my Medicare details, or observe a woman breastfeed. It seems, despite our marvellous nuances and stupid pursuits for attention, we are all fundamentally alike and possess the same mundane needs. At the end of the day, everyone just wants a clean house, someone to assemble their child’s cubby house, the gutters cleared or assistance in moving all that stuff they don’t know how they managed to collect over the years.
On day two of the exam period, I drop The Man at Melbourne Airport. Driving home, I think about the pile of washing waiting for me and the fact I have missed my opportunity to ask him about the error code. The next morning, I wake up and do the thing I said I would never do. I drop my clothes off at the Wash, Dry, Fold. A young professional couple is also dropping off clothes when I enter The Mat. He is in a suit, and she is in a taught exercise ensemble that works to both vacuum and smooth the various parts of her. Standing behind this woman, staring at the exaggerated wedgie design of the bike shorts, Jia Tolentino’s description of exercise clothing as the modern-day corset feels very apt. The laundry mat owner seems un-surprised when I approach with my washing. He hauls it onto the scale, which computes a price of $28 and tells me he’ll do it for $25 since it’s my first time. He says this with a quiet smugness, which I resent him for but accept. The pick-up shelves are at capacity with other people’s garments. He has a shiny complexion I quickly discern is due to a thin layer of sweat forming on him. He is flustered, un-composed. I turn around and find three people standing in line behind me who were not there a moment ago. I scan over every detail of these people, trying and failing to distinguish myself.
A woman in a tight blue button-up dress and patent white ankle boots stops out the front of the deli. She has stopped walking to interact with the mirrored windows of the residence next door. She touches up her hair, which is pulled back in a tight updo, and assesses herself in the mirror as she turns around. She is holding a cardboard bowl I recognise from the takeaway salad chain at the end of my street, which plays loud techno music at all hours of the day. She climbs into her car to do as people parked in front of the deli often do between the hours of 12 pm and 2 pm from Monday to Friday. I have come to see there are two ways people generally go about eating these salad bowls. Some eat slowly and savour every single shaving of cabbage whereas others, like the woman before me today, carry large forkfuls to their mouth quickly as if they have not eaten in several days. Like the others of her kind, this woman oscillates her attention between her phone screen and the rear-view mirror while she eats. And, just like the others, is indifferent to my staring. For a price that falls somewhere between $11.90 and $21.90, these salad bowls leave you feeling an empty kind of fullness, and clog you up from all the cabbage, wasabi peas, and seaweed salad. It took me several attempts to realise they make me feel very depressed after eating them. Though still, they are all rage as I watch a man in an immaculate navy suit climb into a Tesla to eat his.
I am pleased when The Man’s face fills my phone screen tonight just in time for my dinner. I think back to when I was first adjusting to living alone and would call a family member or friend to keep me company while I ate. I chew slowly while listening to him speak about Italy’s arduous bureaucracy. The Man probes me about my first week of yoga and I am confronted by the room of rising chests, all of which have been cosmetically exaggerated or bound in expensive pastel lycra. I explain to him that attending after-business-hours yoga is a lot like attending the cinema on the day the tickets are cheaper: both serve to remind me of the species I belong to – its fundamental needs and un-unique desires. What else, he says. I pause, spear a piece of asparagus with my fork, and remember how Marieke Rijneveld likened spearing a bean to making a recorder. I resist telling The Man I succumbed to the Wash, Dry, and Fold, concerned about what it might do to his idea of me. When I hang up, I become even more concerned that I insist on maintaining control over his idea of me. I put my university reading aside and fall into my leather armchair for one of the last times in the deli’s upstairs. Next to Tolentino’s book is Solnit’s ‘Recollections of my Nonexistence’, an account of her 17-year-long experience living in her quant apartment alone. I decide to photograph the view from my chair, recognising future me will appreciate the visual aid. I locate the essay easily. The one in which Tolentino writes at length about the chopped salad chain of America, which is a lot like the chopped salad chain at the end of my street. The chopped salad is synonymous with the Wash, Dry and Fold. As I read, I try my best to unmind the fact that the laundromat’s owner handled the pyjamas I’m wearing. According to Tolentino, these services are genius, they’ve capitalised on the ethos of me and my contemporaries. That is, they facilitate our productivity, which we’ve convinced ourselves our self-worth depends on. So, while I’ve maximised on time and tasks, sitting in clothes fresh from the Wash, Dry and Fold leaves me with the same aftertaste as a chopped salad — as if I’ve cheated the natural order of things.
Yellow Days 
This is really great, keep writing
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