The devil is in the details

Laundromat drama, quintessential Brookline, and race

I've written before about weirdness at my local laundromat, particularly the time when my clothes almost got stolen, but today was definitely a whole new adventure, which also very clearly illustrates one of the little jokes I often tell about the place where I live.

You see, I live in a Boston suburb that is a little quirky. One of the quirks has to do with our police department. You see, we have basically no crime and the police are sometimes desperate for things to do (other than give parking tickets, which they are obviously good at). There is a large sign, updated daily, in a main intersection that lists the percent of people that day who were wearing their seatbelts while passing the intersection as well as the goal which is 100%...yes, that's true someone sits there and counts who is wearing seatbelts all day. Once I was walking home from a bar after a beer or so (not drunk at all and walking through a perfectly safe area) when a police officer pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride home, obviously bored. Then he decided that he ought to call a female officer because it would better kill time. The police department made QUITE the showing at the town's 300th anniversary celebration as well. I had only seen them actually doing something useful once, and that was talking to a man on the street as if he may have done something wrong. The strange thing about it was that he seemed to be cooperating and everything seemed fine, but the policeman and police car to suspect ratio was rather high. It is definitely comforting to live in such a safe area and know that the police would be ALL OVER anything that went wrong (it would surely make their week) but it seems a little silly sometimes.

Anyway, tonight when I went to put my stuff in the washer the laundromat was empty save for one man. He smelled of alcohol and was extremely talkative. There was something kind of off about him and I spent my time sort of smiling and nodding enough not to piss him off but mostly ignoring him. I was a little uncomfortable, but not too bad. I did wonder whether I should leave my clothes alone, but I figured it was unlikely that he would steal them from the washer (since who would take WET clothes? and since he obviously had his own laundry) and that leaving was preferable to staying at the laundromat with him. So I left.

When I returned, the man was still there and there was another girl about my age. They seemed to be having a little confrontation. It turned out that she was having trouble getting the change machine to take her money and the guy was trying to "help". He kept ripping the money out of her hand and clumsily trying to show her what to do. She was obviously uncomfortable and kept looking at me for help (but there wasn't much I could do). She finally got her $10 back from him, said she was going to a nearby store to break the money and left, asking me to watch her bag. I went back to ignoring the guy, which was harder because he really wanted to talk about the girl. Shortly thereafter she came back with a guy (prompting the drunk guy to say "Oh, you brought your muscle?" picked up her bag of clothes and left. This seemed to really tick off the drunk guy, who then wanted to talk about how disrespectful to him it was and also how terrible it was that she obviously didn't care about me. I went about putting my clothes in the dryer, although he was talking at me the whole time, telling me that I was using the wrong dryers etc. I just kept on ignoring him as much as possible.

And then the police arrived. In typical Brookline fashion, three police cars with uniformed officers came to investigate the situation, accompanied by another car with 2-3 plain clothes officers. I overheard later that they had also sent a car to a nearby address to speak with the girl. They came in and asked the guy some questions and then one officer saw me and took me outside to discuss the situation. I told him what happened, and from the questions he asked me I surmised that the girl was shaken up and had not explained well and made it sound like the guy cornered her and stole $10. They thanked me and told me that I had helped a lot. For some reason I felt weird leaving my clothes alone in all of this mess (although I don't know why...its not like something would have happened with all of the police there) so I stood outside the laundromat along with the other neighborhood residents who had come to wash their clothes that the police would not let in. Random passerbys kept coming and asking questions. The laundromat is at the intersection of my side street and a main road and cars kept pulling over to ask what happened, blocking the little of the road that was left after all of the police cars parked. They were in the laundromat a long time talking with him. He finally left and looked quite annoyed. Anyway, it seemed like a strange event with an extremely stereotypical Brookline Police response. I couldn't help but giggle, except for when I was talking to the policeman or when my roommate happened to come across the whole thing and find me in the middle of it and ask worriedly "Are you alright?"

The one nagging thing that is on my mind is about race. The drunk guy in question was black, while both the freaked out girl and I are white. I can't speak for the other girl, but it didn't matter to me that he was black. The weird behavior was what made me uncomfortable. The guy obviously thought that she was unhappy and left in the first place (and asked me to watch her bag) because of his race and then seemed to think the police call was also a race thing. Anyway, I don't know what I think about that part of the scenario...was there a way to make it clear that it wasn't about race?

posted by Immunegirl @ 8:40 PM