![[Photo: happy sailors]](happy.jpg)
In which Larry does laundry...
Roche Harbor San Juan Island 1998 Aug 05 Wednesday Late and getting later
After dinner, Larry volunteered to do laundry and collected dirty clothes from everyone. I grabbed my camera gear and tried to capture some images of the harbor, and then proceeded to do the usual preparations for the night. On this trip, we had not assigned permanent cabins to each person, but had decided on rotating sleeping positions for the night, so everyone could get a taste of what it was like to sleep at a particular spot. It's a nice idea, but what happens then is that everything gets moved around every night just before bedtime.
I was sitting outside the laundromat in the fading evening light, taking notes for this travelog. I was on a sort of patio with plastic picnic tables and chairs. A couple of tables away, a few youths sat. And then more approached. And more. And gradually things became quite horrible.
These kids were obviously rich. And they were obviously immature to a fault. They were college age, but acted like high schoolers. A pair of boys approached the group, and this pair was jostling, shoving at one another, playing dominance games. One girl liked to seek attention by asking "Do you know about..." She said, "I go to 'Ol' Miss'. Have you ever heard of 'Ol' Miss'? A guy called a girl away from the group for a private conversation, a conversation held right behind me. Did I say "conversation"? I meant "childish tirade." "So what's this?" he asked, "So you love Bill now?" The girl asked what he was talking about. "Well, you're always Bill this and Bill says that." I didn't know much about the situation, but I guessed that Bill had more to say than this guy did. Someone mentioned staying on Kiawah Island. "Fuck, I hate rich people. My parents aren't rich. I am, though. Kind of funny how that turned out." And still the crowd grew. Spoiled white children of haughty white parents, stuck in a yachting resort with nothing better to do than have insipid conversations with one another.
Lea stopped by. I talked to her about the spoiled white trash nearby. She shook her head sadly. What was really sad, she said, was the lady's room in a yachting harbor in the morning. It was full of wives primping, getting their hair perfectly in place. (Do I need to mention that boats are windy places? These wives must spend their time belowdecks if they want their hairdoes to survive.) They all look so well-preserved. She wished me luck, and took off.
The young people continued to command my attention and contempt. Middle-aged people walked past their table, caught snatches of conversation, and looked sad. Then they'd look at me in my splotchy hat, yin-yang t-shirt, cut-off shorts, with a plastic garbage bag lying at my feet, writing furiously on my clipboard, and they didn't know what facial expression to use. Still, the conversation intruded. "I'd like to be a radiologist. Do you know what that is?" That didn't sound unreasonable. "The ice cream store is closed, man." "Shut up, man." Wow. That was a lot of scorn dealt for the bearer of such mildly bad tidings. "Have you heard of Bloomingdales?" A group of them wandered off to get stoned. One fellow, talking to another's girlfriend took time to call out, "Hey, Josh, getting a little jealous?" "You know who the Maytag repairman is? He's my grandfather." "He's got a girlfriend and you're hugging him?" These kids were scaring me. They were going to be running the country one day.
"Hanson! Hanson! You're the lost member of Hanson!" "You think I haven't heard that before, bitch?" So why do you still wear your hair that way, I wondered. Hanson walks off, yelling "Bitch!" "Bitch yourself!" a pause as Bitch, the one who goes to Ol' Miss, gathers her wits, then continues her rejoinder: "Fucker!" A middle aged couple walked past as the stoners rejoined the fold. One of them addressed another: "Stoner. Stoner boner. Ha ha ha ha ha." The woman of the middle-aged couple laughed nervously, said to the man, "It's the happening out here." The man replied, "Jesus, I don't know what to tell you." A girl is screaming. A boy is carrying her slung across his shoulders. "Stop!" she yells, "Mike, stop! I mean it! Stop! Put me down!" I don't move to help. Mike puts her down. "You should have tossed her in the water, Mike!" There must have been twenty of these kids. Couldn't one of them analyze something, compare some experience to something else, show some evidence of higher thought? Hanson was back. Ol' Miss, sure of his attention, now turned friendly. "I didn't meant to be mean when I said you looked like Hanson. I like Hanson, really. But you could be more like--Tom Cruise." "Yeah, I look fucking a lot like Tom Cruise. Me and Tom, we're like that!" These two were getting friendly. I wondered if sometime in the future they would get together to make yet more obnoxious people.
I was inspired to write this poem:
Add soap, close cover, agitate, and rinse.
Once more shall stinky clothes be wearable.
Yet whence came these juv'nile delinquents?
My night has become quite unbearable!
...which just goes to show that from great suffering comes great art, but a bad night at the laundromat just results in doggerel.
Our travel plans called for us to be away from marinas for the next couple of nights.
That was fine with me. I went into the laundry room. A guy in a red-and-white
striped uniform had taken our stuff out of the dryer to put other stuff in. I guess
he worked for the resort. I smiled at him weakly, gathered up our clothes, and went
back to the boat.
Larry returned with the laundry, and horror stories about shallow upper-class college students with too much bonding with each other by bragging or fooling around outside the Laundromat. What an interesting place for a teenage hangout! With that thought I fell asleep.
Back on the boat, we discovered that one of Scarlet's socks had gone missing in the wash. I was heading back on land for my shower anyhow, so I stopped by the laundromat. The uniformed guy who'd taken our laundry out of the dryer was still there. Had he seen the sock? No, he hadn't. He tried looking through the dryer's current contents. Still no luck. Oh, well, thanks. He asked me if he could buy some quarters for the machines. Sure. I started to go through my pockets. "I have to reserve these six quarters for the shower," I said, "my shipmates kind of insisted on that." Dumb joke. Really dumb. The instant I'd said "shipmates," this guy's smile had snapped down into a frown. "Never mind the quarters," he said, "I just remembered I don't have any money." Maybe he'd just remembered that. Maybe he figured anyone with "shipmates" wasn't someone he wanted to talk to. (The next morning, Scarlet's sock showed up, hidden in someone else's clean laundry.)
Back in the boat, Scarlet had stayed up reading in the salon. Maybe leaving the light on so that I could find my way around when I got back. It occurred to me that maybe I should have announced I was taking a flashlight with me when I'd left.
Soon the lights were out and we were snuggling into our respective benches. And then there was the distinct thump of someone getting onto the boat. I got nervous. But then, I reflected, Scarlet didn't seem nervous--and she was the more experienced sailor. That's when Scarlet whispered, "It felt like someone got on." I put my feet down, started to get up, heard a growl from outside. "I heard a growl," I said, "I think it might be a dog." I was lying. A growl that deep, I was thinking about bears. A plan was forming in my head. I'd close up the hatch, radio the harbormaster, tell them we had a bear on deck. They'd have bright lights, guns, they would know what to do. "No, I think that was Piaw," Scarlet said. Oh yeah. Piaw was in the aft cabin, no doubt snoring. That explained the growling, but not the thump, nor the rocking of the boat. I walked up on deck, swiveling my head so as not to let anyone get the jump on me.
There was no one. I went back down. "Spooky and mysterious and hopefully nothing," I said. Scarlet muttered something. We slept.
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