I go to the Sparkle Laundry because I have no laundry machine at my apartment. Maybe I’d go even if I did. I love the Sparkle Laundry. They sell pizza by the slice and energy drinks, and soda and “Dew Can”, which has its own line item on the menu beneath general-purpose soda and is seventy-five cents. I see sad middle-aged men here and students who live in the cheapest apartments and older Native and Mexican women and all the other people here who’ve ended up without a washing machine for some reason. I like it because I’ll never see my friends or ex-girlfriends here. All my friends and ex-girlfriends own washing machines. If it was socially acceptable, I’d invite my friends and dates here on Friday nights because I like it better than the bars.

I like watching the machines go round and round. I like the smell of the driers and detergent. I like the smell of clean laundry mixed with cheap pizza. I like the muzak. I like the western loneliness. I like how the washing machines get the ballsweat and floor glue and sawdust and ash out of my clothes. I like how the spare quarters jangle in my jean pockets all week afterwards. I like how they fall out in front of the cute barista at the coffee shop when I reach to pull out my wallet to pay by card. I like how they end up wedged around my apartment. If I had a washing machine, they would mostly end up behind it.

The Sparkle Laundry makes me feel clean and Catholic again. When I buy the tide pod from the tall, awkward guy behind the counter, I wish he would crush it and anoint me with it like the Most Revered Peter J. Jugis, bishop of Charlotte. I want the Blood of Christ on the menu right under the Dew Can. I want to be rebaptized in the Maytag Double-Load washer. I want to kneel with the derelicts at the folding table. I want “Oh God Beyond All Praising” over the speakers. I want something other than the dirt in my hair and the old, tired guilt.

Sy Holmes is a writer from western North Carolina. He lives in the mountain West with other people's dogs.