A man is sitting in one of those white plastic lawn chairs inside the Laundromat. He is nearly fifty, and is wearing shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. The sweatshirt is the kind that pulls over, without a zipper, and it’s that speckled ash-gray color. His skin is tarnished with years of blue-collar banality. His face is rough with white bristle—some is peppered with black patches. His scruff matches the sweatshirt. His face sags.
His eyes are sullen and looking down. Down into his lap where his hands pound away on the keyboard of an old Sony laptop. The computer has seen better days and is considered a fossil to all those walking by with touch-screen cell phones and notebooks.
The man’s fingers work quickly on the keys and his eyes gently follow the results on the screen. He appears to be in the midst of some kind of momentum he has built up for himself—whatever he is doing, whatever work he’s doing, it is going steady and with rapid progress.
The fingers of his right hand spin and drag along the mouse pad and then the sound of a soft click of the button below it. His right knee nervously bounces up and down and when he notices it shaking the laptop all over the place the bouncing stops. A sign above his head on the wall reads “Free Wireless Internet.”
Inserted into the side of his old laptop is one of those little USB flash drives that holds files and are most commonly used for transferring information between computers. He makes a click and the flash drive lights up—its little blue light blinks for about two seconds. Saving progress.
It becomes a pattern. His hands are moving. His eyes follow slowly. Knee starts bouncing. His eyes move from the screen to the knee. Bouncing stops. Eyes back on screen. He clicks. The light blinks. The drive saves.
Every so often something goes wrong. The man leans his head back in a frustrated motion and looks out the window to his right. His jowls tense up and the wrinkles in his face fold inward and they sink deeper. You can’t see what he is doing but you can imagine the computer is fouling up. Maybe it’s as old as it looks, maybe older. New technology is always bullying and pushing the relics farther and farther away from us until your only option is to throw them in the dumpster and buy a new one. Nearly nothing can be upgraded, and when it can it’s costly and inconvenient. Your average consumer doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
This man has a stubborn sort of pride in his expressions, and whatever he is doing, it’s good enough for him. But it’s not good enough for the rest of the world. He’s slowly learning that fact and his reactions are telling the rest of us all about it.
There are two televisions mounted high on the wall opposite the man. Both are turned off. Several people pull wet clothes from the overpriced washers you can barely fit a pair of pants into and lay them into the carts the Laundromat provides. They wheel the carts to the dryers against the wall with the televisions and begin lapping their clothes into the dryer’s bellies. They fish out a handful of quarters and pump them into the slot before hitting the button that starts them tumbling. High up in the far corner away from anyone’s attention a security camera watching our every move.
The man checks the time and looks over at the dryer containing his clothes. Another fifteen minutes are left. A few random articles roll and roll under the quiet din inside the machine. The man’s hands go back to hurried work and his eyes re-focus on the screen. The mouse clicks and the flash drive blinks.
He takes a sip of coffee he bought from the donut shop down the street. The lid won’t stay on properly and coffee runs down his fingers. He sets the cup down and rings his hand out in the air. His work continues as people come and go, the machines spin and hum, the fluorescent lights buzz and buzz.
The computer bogs down on him again. The man slaps his hands down into his lap and his shoelaces rattle. His head is back and he takes a deep breath. His skull meets the wall with a hollow thud that catches few peoples attention. Quick glances come his way but the man doesn’t take notice. He looks down into the screen of the computer and his jaw is clenching and unclenching.
The spitting computer sound we all have come to recognize when our own machines give us static is ticking and booming from the man’s lap. He clicks. He types. He slaps his hand down. Refresh. Reload.
We all hate waiting these days. Everything moves so fast that when there’s a hiccup we are reminded that nothing is perfect. Even though we all have come to expect it, and the larger corporations strive to make our little lives easier, it just isn’t possible. We still stand in line, we still sit through traffic—even the latest in music file players bog down and need repeated reformatting.
The woman behind the counter sits against the window and plays with her cell phone. She’s either texting or playing a game. Most of the time it’s going to be texting. That’s how we all communicate with each other—as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, so that we can continue working and making progress. No time for hiccups, no time for human contact.
But nothing is perfect.
The man is typing away again, his face is red and his eyes are maddening. It appears as if he’s fighting with his dependency. He’s furious but he still uses the computer as if there is no other option. He pauses, the clicking stops, the blue light blinks. His eyes go wide, wider, and his right hand comes up and runs its fingers over his scalp, down, over his tired face and slams back into the keyboard.
His hands pick the laptop up and it’s shaking in the air. The man’s jowls waddle with the motion—its prickly surface scratching into itself. His voice box is grunting. The man is getting redder. His eyes are fixated and the grunting gets louder. The woman behind the counter looks up from her texting. Few people around barely take notice. The security camera watches.
The man stops shaking, brings the laptop back down, yanks the little blinking drive from the side panel, and in one swift motion the man smashes the computer into the cold tile floor. The high ceilings in this place make a sonic explosion out of the sound of impact. Everyone halts. Time freezes. Plastic debris and fragments of circuitry careen off and out into the morning air. The computer crashed into the floor at a slight angle and the battered remains slide across the tile and stop at the counter. The woman watches from behind her cell phone. The people peek over their laundry piles spread out on the folding tables.
The man stands with hatred in his eyes. He marches across the field of broken shards of retired equipment—scattered pieces popping and crunching under the steps of his shoes—and he scoops up the broken computer with both hands. His launches it into the ground again, this time screaming at the top of his lungs. A generous roar boasting from his esophagus. His eyes bulge and his skin is throbbing, veins cover the surface of his forehead and neck.
The computer bursts and the keys fly high and far, some spinning, some ricocheting off the man’s face and chest. The screen shatters into rain. The rain showers upward and then fountains into the ground at the man’s feet. The rest snaps into a mass of bended melting foil.
He screams again, first aiming his voice down into the wreck, like the lion who triumphed over his adversary and is making a social example to any passersby. His head raises and the roar lifts. It spreads throughout all of our ears. The few still inside the Laundromat watch with anticipatory wide eyes.
The man’s breathing is heavy and his chest moves up and down, expands and contracts, hot air breathing all over the tattered collection of confetti.
His maddened eyes gaze around the Laundromat at all of the machines and the camera and the woman at the counter and all of the spectators. His mouth is frothing and he has a taste for blood—the scent is in the air. He continues to scan the room, fists clenched.
The man’s eyes stop at mine and he holds the stare. His breathing increases. His intensity surges. His shoulders move up and down with every breath he takes. Shattered computer at his feet, around his feet, underneath his feet. Crunching, crying out, destroyed.
My eyes go from his shoulders to the ground to his fists to his eyes to the ground and back to his eyes again. A woman next to me gasps. Actually gasps and brings her palms into her face.
The man takes a step towards me and, amidst his bellowing rage the man says to me, “What the fuck are you looking at.”
