I didn’t want to repeat the mistake I made last week in taking nothing but a pair of picture magazines, Vogue and House & Garden, to the laundromat so I walked down to Tro Harper and bought a good, thick book, a Dickens I haven’t read yet, Dombey and Son. I’ve finished the first five chapters, and I’ll probably chew my way through the rest of the book this week.

Like my shopping, my laundry is done far away. I use the laundromat across the street from where Tim’s sister used to live on 21st Street. 

In the laundromat everyone around me speaks Spanish and I feel like a bright yellow dot. When I go to the grocery store next door to get detergent, the clerks speak Spanish until I walk up, and they chirp in perfect English “dollar ninety-five.”

Today, when I went into the back of the grocery to see if they had crawfish for sale, the old gentleman behind the deli counter said “que lindo pelo,” and patted his head. I smiled and thanked him . As I left, I could hear him saying “que lindo, que lindo” and explaining something to the lady that worked with him. Everyone likes my hair.

I was young, I was pretty and, once a month, I went through the long, stinging ordeal of having my hair razored down into a perfectly arced buzzcut and then peroxided to a whitish blonde with blue lights. At the time, I was slender enough that the result made me look delicate and exotic rather than butch. Add a black angora turtle neck, a leather bolero jacket, tight black jeans, gold hoop earrings, lots of eyeliner, and bright red lipstick, and I ready to club South of Market. I got into at least one place for free by allowing the bouncer to run his hand over my head.