Before dinner, I go down to the laundry room armed with detergent and quarters. It’s in the basement of my residence hall: downstairs, towards the library, turn right, walk down the orange corridor, go past the payphone and the washroom. It’s the white room that smells of warm teddy bears. The rest of the residence hall has recovered well from the 70s; perhaps it was remodelled recently. The laundry room wasn’t touched, however, and its stuck-in-time ugliness suggests some evil, hidden past. I can almost smell it.I have my dirty undies, but all the washers are engaged. All the dryers, too. This strategy of doing a quick load while I go to dinner is not going to work. On closer inspection, I see that some washers, though full, are finished their cycle. Orange lights signal wash-in-process: orange, orange, blank, orange, blank, blank, blank, orange. The whole room is blinking. Standing among the whirring, blinking machines, wrapped in hot cotton smell, I’m beginning to get dizzy.Since my underwear’s not in a bag, it’s draped over my arms. As the situation doesn’t solve itself, a few dark panties fall to the dirty white floor.That word “panties” is not one my mother would have used. Do I wear panties? My mother doesn’t. She is the type of mother to counsel her 21-year-old daughter to save herself for marriage. She means well. She has terrible timing. And on the question of “panties” or the more straightforward “underwear” it’s a matter of taste or perception: where I see underwear, someone else sees panties.Then there’s lingerie. My taste in underwear doesn’t run to lingerie. I can see that clearly when I pick up the few pairs I’ve dropped. Why not? Too “American?” Against the white floor, they look decidedly sensible. Worn out even: blue, black, grey, cotton, hip-huggers. Like my bathing suit. Like my pants and tank-tops and t-shirts. Cotton girl, girl of the nineties, mother’s girl, sensible. No, wait. Poet, great poet of the time. Great cotton poet. Cotton laureate.A man comes into the laundry room, a young man in army pants and a loose, worn-out t-shirt. He wears a braided necklace, made of hemp perhaps, and long, thick dirty blond hair, pulled back neatly. I snap myself together. I need to take care of this situation. I’ll have to take someone else’s clothes out of a machine. I look around: no laundry basket. No flat surface. I am completely deprived of resources. I’ll have to put the wet clothes on top of a washer: very crude. I open a machine that’s clearly finished its cycle and drag out its contents. Underwear, socks, personal sheets, what if I know this person? Touching their underwear–they are stained! Clean, clean, clean, clean, I tell myself. Great poet, great, great poet.The male figure behind me is clanging around with his washer or dryer. I don’t look at him for fear he’ll see me pulling out this stranger’s underwear. I have noticed that the men around here are a sort of outdoors type, dressed in tank tops, jeans and Tevas, with tanned shoulders. Mostly they’re hairless. Not that I care. Though the hairlessness unsettles me somewhat: SO young? Maybe I should ask this guy to settle the panties issue? No, no, no. I glance around—he’s not looking in my direction.Clothes in, pockets checked. Now I need detergent. There’s a wall dispenser of laundry soap. I put in my quarters and pull on the handle. It’s loaded like a pinball spring and takes some force to get in position. I have to pull the lever almost to the center of the room. I launch it. It slams back into the wall-mount and ping! produces the detergent I want, in its neat box. I laugh out loud. Pinball laundry soap! The guy doesn’t look over at my antics. I open the box by pushing in the orange tab, like the instructions say. I sprinkle half of the soap into the machine. I slide the quarters, flat in the metal tongue, into the washer. I close the lid and set the temperature to “warm.” There! The guy is still fiddling with his dryer. Is he flirting with me?At dinner they’ll serve us glazed chicken, poached fish, overcooked vegetables (what can you expect), salad, especially things marinated or pickled, and then as though to make up for it, they have piled another table nearby with pies, cakes, fruit tarts and so on and on. But first I’ll need some quarters for the dryer– I decide to get some before going out of this building and down for dinner.I’m pleased at having solved the all-washers-full situation so I don’t look up at the other wall-dispensing unit as I put in my loonie. It says, ‘Canadian loonies only!’, and I must ask: what other kinds are there? But, being very clever, I assume that it is the machine that makes change. I put in my loonie and turn the knob hard, remembering the struggle with the soap dispenser. I look at where the coins are going to come out: it’s sloped. Something funny about that, I think. What quarter-giving machine would have a sloped mouth? Bad design: it will cause the change scatter all over the floor, roll under the machines, and disappear into hard-to-reach places. I put my hand in place to receive my four quarters. Too late I realize, something is wrong. I’ve made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Out of that sloped mouth drops a little grey packet. It’s a square package wrapped in cellophane—not my quarters at all– “Pleasure” it says in hot red lettering, #4.” A condom.I run away from the dispenser, blushing and snorting in disbelief. What, oh what, am I doing? I sneak a look at the guy who is still—good lord, what is he doing? —perfecting his dryer technique, head down, sorting things out. Does he think I’m trying to be suggestive? I turn the package over and over in my palm. Bag over my left shoulder, arms down by my side, underwear safely, privately washing, I quickly leave the basement laundry room.Dinner is what I expected. I have no quarters for the dryer. But now I have one condom. And that changes everything.Banff Center for the Arts, August 1998