Loose Change

(11/3/2024)

My new apartment has laundry in the basement. I’m on the sixth floor and the elevator takes four minutes to arrive in the basement. Two minutes and fifty-seven seconds, the timer on my phone says once I arrive. That’s just to prove the absurd lethargy of the 1900-something machine. A wonder it doesn’t collapse into hell. It does actually; hell is the basement. Here, the laundry machine is coin-operated. It takes only quarters. The washing machine is $1.50 and the dryer is $1. After the first round of drying, even on the heavy duty setting, the clothing is still damp. Realistically, the dryer costs $2. I try to do laundry once a week, on a Monday or Tuesday, which are days that other people usually do other things like recover from hangovers and go to the gym. They are guilt-fueled days of self-care and money-making. En-dash days of do-gooding and clean-eating and boot-licking. Never chores. Or laundry. 

Photo by Tuccera LLC on Unsplash

Then there is the question of a coin-op laundry system in a building that has no means to procure loose change. How is it to perform its duty while one cannot feed it- a tech bro without espresso? The basement is where the trash goes and Buley, the building manager, sleeps and where an uncertain yet penetrating sour scent originates. It is not the smell of trash, per se. More like a symphony of the tenement. A symphony of the nose permeates the building. It rises, like heat, through the elevator shaft up to the sixth floor. Stench falsetto in my apartment. 

All of this would be said and done if coins were a common object anymore. Wallets are even out of fashion. I use my iPhone’s tap system to pay for groceries, the metro, and lottery tickets. Other purchases made from places like Amazon and Ssense are made online and delivered to my door on the sixth floor. These are reasonable modern establishments. My building doesn’t even have a mailroom. Since last week, the quarter bowl near the front door has been empty. 

Today is Tuesday and tomorrow is a day many people do their laundry. “Hump day.” No, not hump-day. So I must do mine today but I have no quarters. I searched my wallet and only two $5 bills and nickels. A few Euros and Zloty and Yuan. On my way out of the apartment building to exchange $5 for quarters, I hand the old woman who always asks me for change the other $5 bill. October this year is much like July in terms of weather. 

At Bob & Betty’s, I buy a gallon of soy milk and a quart of bone broth, hoping they’ll give me change in quarters. Groceries have become stupidly expensive this year. These two liquid drinks in cardboard cost me $18. I pay and ask if they can give me change for my $5. “We don’t have quarters,” they say. I tell them neither do I. The market across the street has several kinds of electrolyte water and different flavors of Takis. Coconut waters are in the back with the bruised bananas. I buy coconut water with my $5 and ask for change in quarters. He gives me change in bills and dimes. Ok? I go to another market and the same thing happens so now I have two bottles of coconut water, one soy milk, and one bone broth. No quarters. 

I walk back to my apartment building, annoyed and sweaty. Exchange rates are down, I tell the woman. She’s standing there with a cup of coffee and something else in a brown paper bag that she probably got with my $5. Verging on tears, I frown and she asks me what’s wrong. It’s this unresolvable predicament— absurdity of modern life! A coin purse emerges from her coat pocket, quarters spill onto her hands. Eight of them and I ask her for four more. Twelve quarters: three dollars. My clothing will be damp and I’ll have to hang it on the kitchen chairs. Only three kitchen chairs, I’ll have to hang the sheets on the door hinges—what a beautiful phrase. Door-hinges. 

Thank you, I say. Kind woman. Enjoy your coffee. 

This note was written last month. I am in a new apartment this month. It’s not really an apartment, more of a townhouse. Not a brownstone though. It’s gray and disadvantaged. There is no laundry in the basement. Laundromats boast themselves next to the burger and pizza joints (two-in-one). A block down the road there’s one called Perfect Laundry. This shop is very fortunate, it has a machine at the front that distributes quarters. I fill my palms and pockets and ball cap with them. I feel so rich. Wealth is most certainly relative.