Buy a Dryer

I was over at a friend's house the other night. Actually, it was yesterday night. She lives in the 7th floor of an old "plattenbau" cement block building, in the heart of suburban former Eastern Germany.

I rang the bell at the door of the building, and waited for my friend to let me in. While I was waiting, a pretty young woman and a older man came to the door. By "pretty" I mean that she was probably a prostitute. The man looked like he could use a good dose of the gospel, and avoided my eye contact, sheepishly looking at the ground as the pretty girl tried to make awkward conversation. "Zis wezzer is normal for you where you come from, or I zink no?" From his silent response, I guessed the man was a foreigner.

I followed the couple into the house stairwell, and headed to the elevator, which only went up to the 6th floor. As I hiked up the last flight of stairs, I realized that the extra climb probably explained why my friend had gotten such a good deal on rent. That, and the fact that because of its proximity to Oranienburger Strasse, the pretty girl I had met downstairs wasn't the only professional of her kind living in the house.


Upon entering my friend's apartment, I took off my shoes and walked through the green-painted entry way with a map of East and West Berlin from 1961 on the wall. The hallway awkwardly ended at the junction of the door to the bathroom next to an alcove for the washing machine, the door to a bedroom, and the doorway to the kitchen. I followed my friend into the kitchen, past the drying rack, where someone had hung their colored wash.

As my friend started preparing a dinner of a fried egg and boiled potatoes with ketchup, I sat down to chat. Well, actually, I cut the potatoes before I sat down. As we chatted, I looked around the small kitchen.

A long wooden shelf on wall to my left held the food of an apparently male roommate. The left half of the shelf was filed with half-consumed bottles of wine, rum, and other assorted exotic beverages. The beer was on the ground in crates next to two TVs. My friend told me the one on the top worked. The bottom one was for replacement parts. On the wall under the shelf, there were three black and white postcards. The first one was a picture of the Dresden inner city before the world wars, exhibiting the Frauenkirche. The second was a tribute to life in Eastern Germany, and had a picture of a fence with the words "Behind the Wall". The third was a tourist postcard from New York.

The wall in front of me had a skinny electric stove next to a skinny, half-sized refrigerator and skinny sink. A shelf above the sink held glasses, cups, and plates used for the consumption of the goods on the other shelf.

My friend suddenly cursed in English. Startled, I stood up. She asked me if I liked my eggs with the yolks popped. I said "Sure." She liked her eggs once over without the yolk popped. "Because they're the hardest to make that way."

My attention drifted to the drying rack which was displaying the damp clothing items of one of the roommates - an embarrassing social side effect of trying to save electricity by not having a dryer. I tried not to stare, but I couldn't help but to notice a week's worth of panties among a towel and some shirts. Ever since I developed a certain sense of underwear "brand loyalty" shortly before I turned 19, I have fallen out of the loop when it comes to underwear styles, so I wasn't sure whether they were guy's or girl's undies that were drying there. And I couldn't really make out the shape because they were folded in half over the drying rack. And, I felt awkward examining the undies of other people, even if they were on display in the kitchen.

However, I did observe that there was block print each pair of undies. I don't really remember any of the sayings on the underwear, but I did notice that they were all different.

This stuck me as very odd. Perhaps it's just because of my aforementioned brand loyalty.

Why would you only have underwear with stuff printed on it? I can only imagine coming out of the shower, going to your underwear drawer, and searching through your collection of underwear until you found the saying that best described your mood.

And I could imagine that it would be devastating if after jumping out of your shower in preparation for the big date, you open your underwear drawer and realize that all of your underwear is dirty except for the last pair that has "I'm Self-Conscious" printed on the back and "Looser" on the front.

I could also maybe understand having one pair of underwear with something dirty printed on it - the result of a white elephant gift exchange during the work Christmas party of 2008.

The thing that I don't get is that except for special circumstances (e.g. hyperpromiscuity), nobody is going to read your underwear besides you.

And then it hit me. I had met one of the two roommates of my friend. He was a rather stickly but sympathetic advertising designer from former East Germany. However, I had not met the other roommate. And I probably never will. But I'm sure she's pretty. And has a good reason for having underwear with printed sayings.

But I don't need to know that.

Please, girl. Please buy a dryer.