I live in Manhattan, New York City -- in a towering skyscraper-apartment. There are more people in my building than in some towns.
We're all piled up on top of each other, one floor after another, forty-five stories tall, some staying for a few months, others for years, in a community of our own.
Living in a building like this -- in New York City - is different from living other places.
Part of what makes it unique is New York itself: There are great bars, clubs and restaurants open all hours -- as you would expect in the city that never sleeps. The noise never stops either, taxis, buses, horns and sirens, which perhaps is why this is "the city that never sleeps."
But it is also unique to live in a soaring tower. The view is great -- I can see the Empire State Building, and the city lights. Small, everyday things make life different here, too. Like the garbage.
We take our garbage down the hall, not to the curb -- and drop it into a garbage chute, where it magically disappears, falling and falling into a dark abyss, into an industrial sized compacter. And then there is laundry.
You see, these tiny apartments don't have room for washers and dryers. Most buildings have one of two options, either the floor-by-floor or the basement.
The first option is to put a couple of laundry machines on each floor, but landlords don't like that so much. If a washer overflows on, say, the 35th floor, everyone "downstairs" will have their apartments ruined as water cascades down to the ground floor.
The other option is to have one big laundry room in the basement, which is what mine has. Two floors below our lobby, deep underground, there is a sub-basement, and that's where we have a large laundry room.
Despite the lack of windows it isn't too bad -- there are a couple of rows of low, energy efficient, front loading washers, two rows of dryers, and a pair of sturdy tables for folding and sorting. There are some windows that face into the hallway that makes it less claustrophobic, even if they are covered by decorative venetian blinds, and a door that locks so they can close the room overnight -- though they never do, since people like to throw in a load of wash at odd hours.
The disadvantage of this kind of setup - the single, big laundry room in the basement - is that it can get crowded at peak hours, everyone jostling for machines, and by the end of the day there are abandoned clothes everywhere, until the place looks as if a giant Salvation Army box exploded after eating one too many sacks of old t-shirts.
So to beat the crowds I do my laundry on weekends, early in the morning. My routine is simple -- I drag a sack of laundry downstairs, pop a few loads into the washing machine, hit the gym while the wash cycle runs, and then stick everything in the dryers before I head back upstairs.
That way I avoid the rush and take care of two things at once. There typically isn't much in my laundry bag -- ever since my wife and I separated after a long marriage (it seemed like 4,865 years, but may actually have been less -- or more) I've been living alone, and since I send my dress shirts out to a laundry -- I never could get that ironing thing down - there's usually just a few bedsheets and odds and ends.
Very boring, right?
Until about a year ago.
As usual, I hit the gym while the washer ran, stuck a couple of loads in the dryer, brought everything up to my apartment and tossed the whole pile on the bed. I had a lot of errands to run, and so when my girlfriend came around for dinner she offered to help put things away.
We were idly folding t-shirts, mindlessly chit-chatting -- one of those "together" moments that women love, when she suddenly drew in her breath and with a sharp exclamation nearly barked at me.
"WHAT is THIS!?"
On the end of her finger was a tiny, dainty, lacy pair of black underwear. She was holding them up as if they had cooties.
The thing is, they weren't mine. (Not that there would have been anything wrong with that, right?)
And they definitely were not hers.
For starters, my girlfriend wasn't "dainty" -- which is fine with me, because I like women with real, soft, natural curves - but that's another story.
I stammered out the honest truth.
"I have no idea what that is, but it looks like somebody's underwear."
It wasn't going to be that simple.
"I can SEE that. Whose are they? Whose panties are YOU GETTING INTO? TELL ME! YOU OWE ME THAT!"
"No, I have no idea!"
"REALLY?! Funny, everything ELSE here is yours, and from this apartment."
It just got worse. She was convinced that I was cheating on her. But I wasn't - absolutely, positively not cheating on her.
I tried to explain.
You see, commercial washing machines routinely eat clothing, and spit it back out randomly. It isn't uncommon to find other people's lost laundry in yours, like one random little tiny kid's sock, or a random washcloth -- or a pair of your neighbor's panties.
I eventually convinced her -- I thought at the time -- that I was telling the truth, but in hindsight I'm not sure she ever believed me.
Our sex life took an immediate, sharp nose dive, the atmosphere between us got chillier, and when we broke up a month later I was pretty sure it was the mystery panties that had triggered the rift. I think she threw those sexy black panties down the garbage chute -- along with our relationship.
Life gradually returned to "normal". Business trips, holidays. Living alone makes life simpler, I have to admit -- but although I missed companionship, at my age -- fifty something -- dating wasn't happening for me, so I kept busy and carried on.
It was about a year later -- a cold, dark November Saturday morning -- that I found myself again doing the laundry. I was sorting through it all on the bed, a nice warm, clean-smelling, fluffy pile of fabrics -- and lo and behold, entwined with a pair of my socks, was another pair of panties. Pink. With a little bow, right in front.
I had to smile wistfully as I turned them over, thinking about the last time this happened. It had been a year since the famous "panty pandemonium" with my ex-girlfriend. Since then the landlord had installed new, energy efficient machines. They used less water -- using energy to make up for it. The rinse cycle spun so hard in these new machines it seemed at times like they were trying to launch themselves to Kennedy Airport.
One unintended effect, though, was that small pieces of clothing would get pinned inside the washer's drum even more frequently -- upside down, on the side -- and unless you carefully rotated and scraped the dryer drum you'd lose things. Like underwear, and socks.
I was about to toss the panties when I saw the tag: La Perla.
