Dirty Laundry Quotes

How did I become President? I began by setting an example, hanging out my own dirty laundry in front of Village Earth right from the start. Every ugly little life secret became a matter of public record. Of course, that included sordid love-life details.

Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.

As some find picking on people a treasured entertainment, ‘recreational bullying’ has become their devious tool, to satisfy an exhibitionist urge to outdo themselves, by dredging up acerbic stories for score-settling and airing dirty laundry. ("On a doggy day")

I’m lonely,” he says aloud, and the silence of the apartment absorbs the words like blood soaking into cotton. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling.

Knowing Myrnin, there could be anything inside, from a body he'd forgotten about to his dirty laundry.

Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do and it's a messy one at that.

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.

You’re too good for me.” He laughed. “Are we talking about the same person? The selfish fucker who curses and yells, blows up cars and beats up people, because he has a temper he can’t control? You know, the one who drinks like a fish and fries his brain with drugs? That person is too good for you?” She shook her head. “I’m talking about the boy who shared his chocolate bar with me when he probably never shared anything before, who gave me his mama’s favourite book, because he thought I deserved to read. The one who seems to be constantly fixing me up when I get hurt. I’m talking about the boy who treats me like I’m a regular girl, the one who desperately needs his bedroom cleaned and laundry washed but chooses to live in a mess and wear dirty clothes, because he’s too polite to ask the girl he kisses for help.” “Wow,” Carmine said. “I’d like to meet that motherfucker.

Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

POOR MARCH It is the HOMELIEST month of the year. Most of it is MUD, Every Imaginable Form of MUD, and what isn't MUD in March is ugly late-season SNOW falling onto the ground in filthy muddy heaps that look like PILES of DIRTY LAUNDRY.

I could stay here, I thought, make money at the track while she nurses me over the bad moments, rubs oil on my body, cooks for me, talks to me, goes to bed with me. Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of a woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

My life is like a trunk stuffed with dirty laundry. It contains more than enough material to drive any one human being to mental aberration - maybe two or three people's worth? My sex life alone would do. It’s nothing I could talk about to anyone. No, I can’t go to a doctor. I have to solve this on my own.

A fresh start is always made with dirty laundry.

he is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. he cannot unlearn the feeling.

Talking about painful events doesn’t necessarily establish community – often quite the contrary. Families and organizations may reject members who air the dirty laundry; friends and family can lost patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why trauma victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection.

That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

Can I resume taking your pants off now?” she asked. “If I let you, will you wipe that dirty fuckin’ look off your face?” “Maybe.” “Babe, I’m gonna need a guarantee or it’s a no-go. I can’t be fuckin’ some bitch who’s looking like she’d rather be doin’ laundry. Not sure my man-whorin’ ego could take a blow like that.

The things we need most are the things we have become most afraid of, such as adventure, intimacy, and authentic communication. We avert our eyes and stick to comfortable topics. We hold it as a virtue to be private, to be discreet, so that no one sees our dirty laundry. We are uncomfortable with intimacy and connection, which are among the greatest of our unmet needs today. To be truly seen and heard, to be truly known, is a deep human need. Our hunger for it is so omnipresent, so much apart of our life experience, that we no more know what it is missing than a fish knows it is wet. We need more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption — anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen or known, or at least see and know ourselves.

The society that hangs the most dirty laundry is the cleanest at its core.

I am Levi Black and my record was spotless; I didn’t mess around with students, I didn’t lose cases, and I sure as hell didn’t air my dirty laundry in public.

Parent power is not a sign of democracy, it is a sign of barbarism. We are to regard education as a service industry, like a laundry, parents are the customers, teachers the washers, children the dirty linen. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And what in the name of boiling hell do parents know about education? How many educated people are there in the world? I could name seventeen or eighteen.

Another time I was working in the laundry, and the Sister opposite, while washing handkerchiefs, repeatedly splashed me with dirty water. My first impulse was to draw back and wipe my face, to show the offender I should be glad if she would behave more quietly; but the next minute I thought how foolish it was to refuse the treasures God offered me so generously, and I refrained from betraying my annoyance. On the contrary, I made such efforts to welcome the shower of dirty water, that at the end of half an hour I had taken quite a fancy to this novel kind of aspersion, and I resolved to come as often as I could to the happy spot where such treasures were freely bestowed.

It started when we were little kids. Free spirits, but already tormented by our own hands given to us by our parents. We got together and wrote on desks and slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountains and slipped through whatever cracks we could find, minds altered, we didn't falter in portraving hysterical and tragic characters in a smog filled universe. we loved the dirty city and the journeys away from it. We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves, chase tails round and round in downward spirals, leaving trail of irretrievable, vital life juice behind. Still, the brothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzz was impenetrable and we lived inside it laughing with no clothes, and everything experimental 'till death was upon us. In our face, mortality.

Everybody's got dirty laundry they don't want other people to see. The trick is figuring out how to not care about it. Make peace with it, accept it as part of who you are.

No one can hate themselves into a version of themselves that they like

Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows. I wasn’t very good on the exchange of vows.

If we address frankly what is evoked by cheese, I think it becomes clear why so little is said. So what does cheese evoke? Damp dark cellars, molds, mildews and mushrooms galore, dirty laundry and high school locker rooms, digestive processes and visceral fermentations, he-goats which do not remind of Chanel … In sum, cheese reminds of dubious, even unsavory places, both in nature and in our own organisms. And yet we love it.

Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it's a messy one, at that.

Because that's what the right partner did: they helped you find your better self, especially when you couldn't clear out the cobwebs on your own to find the way.

Dad was a writer down to his cells, and he loved metaphors. Everything was a metaphor. Your dirty laundry could be one. Unexpected encounters with dog shit, definitely.

The dirty laundry of our confessed sin belongs in the Lord’s laundry hamper; for there He will toss them like mismatched socks as far as the east is from the west.

In my caterpillar experience, a man’s weakness always lies in their past, where all their dirty laundry is buried," he sighs cheeringly.

Sometimes," she said in her pretty, quiet voice, "being the one who has to work extra hard to come close to what is effortless for everyone else truly sucks. Is that what you were trying to say?

How most people carry on is a mystery. What they talk about at supper. How they can stand to sit in front of a TV from eight until Leno every night. How they can think bowling is fun. How they choose their neckties. How they bear the weight of everyday life without screaming. How a person can go through a whole life and never once contemplate suicide, like people who have never once wanted to be a movie star. How one young man can be handsome and strong and marry and heiress and work at Debevoise and Plimpton and retire to Nantucket to await the visits of his grandchildren, how they can be sailing in the bay while another young man, exactly like the first, can end up in a glass room in Lexington, Kentucky, on Haldol and Thorazine, without hope, without a girlfriend, without a future, and how easily the one can become the other. How one woman can take Gatorade to every one of her son's lacrosse games and another can lie in bed all day weeping, popping generic drugs, watching Oprah as though waiting for the Second Coming, and piling her dirty dishes in the laundry room. How life goes in bad directions when your heart is asleep. It's a mystery and there is no answer. (95)

Why couldn’t people just be who they were? Womanizers, drinkers, liars, and manipulators, instead of pretending around it all, hiding the secrets like dirty laundry stuffed under a bed, and then dying, so the grieving got whammed with two losses—the flesh-and-blood bodies and the images they thought they knew.

Now I don't know if you realize it, but the film industry's a small world. It's like living in a tenement at one end of a back alley. Not only do you see everybody's dirty laundry, but once rumors start, you can't stop 'em.

[...] I wondered why I was acting so calm. I wondered why I didn't writhe against being inside my own body. If I could rip off my skin, I'd leave it in a bloody, shapeless heap on the floor beside the toilet, like so much dirty laundry. I'd beat my head against the wall until there was nothing left of my face, if it would get me outside of myself.

Please fut up, Shun,” he interrupted. “Shine, I’ll fut up.” At long last I caught a glimpse of his old smirk. “I thought you wouldn’t poke fun at my peach insteadiment,” he muttered. “But I love peaches.

When no one is watching Mother Earth, and most of the time no one is, she sings softly to herself. Certainly no one is watching after her, to the point where she's now calling herself M. Earth, using her first initial only, like the early women writers who did not want their work to be automatically dismissed because of their gender disadvantage. Though she is grand, M. Earth is feeling, perhaps, overly feminine, and therefore vulnerable. Don't even mention the word Gaia; it's such a projection! She thinks she could benefit from a more macho profile, a little kick-ass to make her point. Perhaps a little masculine detachment would be helpful, or a thicker skin. Because, frankly, she's been trampled, poisoned, stripped bare, robbed blind, and blamed for just about everything that's come down the pike. And like all mothers, everyone just assumes she'll always be there for them with open, loving arms, and a cup of hot cocoa. That it will be her pleasure to feed them, lick their wounds, and clean a load or two of their dirty laundry. She's looking for a little more respect.

It does not come from the fact that women are naturally more able to perceive dirty laundry or that men are blind to housework but from the fact that perception has a social dimension and is shaped by the gendered division of labor: women perceive dirty socks more because they are the ones in charge of doing laundry.

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who Comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam In her eye It's interesting when people die - Give us dirty laundry Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a Running bet Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry You don't really need to find out what's going on You don't really want to know just how far it's gone Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry

He loves the rough men in the romance novels. The mysterious guys with all the swagger.” Trevor’s cheeks flushed. “Men like that don’t exist,” Denver said matter-of-factly. “Women write those books because they don’t want to deal with the reality that their hero has dirty laundry, belches, and doesn’t worship the ground they walk on.

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose.

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature.

What I really want right now is to fuck her mercilessly until her eyes roll up and she’s fuck-stunned from being pounded over and over.

I still couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it all started to go wrong.

My life is like a trunk stuffed with dirty laundry.

Never hang your dirty laundry in public, the wind might blow it everywhere.

I trust my doctor with my life, but not my dirty laundry.

My only relationship policy is, don’t bring your dirty laundry to work, no sex on company furniture and don’t let it affect your work.

[...] movies always depict love in terms of grand romantic gestures when, over the long term, love also means working through money problems and picking dirty laundry off the floor.

The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn’t just want to be free—it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors.

But you sent off that Flounder fellow," Loki said, and I rolled my eyes. "His name is Finn, and I know you know that," I said as I left the room. Loki grabbed the vacuum and followed me. "You called him by his name this morning." "Fine, I know his name," Loki admitted. We went into the next room, and he set down the vacuum as I started peeling the dusty blankets off the bed. "But you were okay with Finn going off to Oslinna, but not Duncan?" "Finn can handle himself," I said tersely. The bedding got stuck on a corner, and Loki came over to help me free it. Once he had, I smiled thinly at him. "Thank you." "But I know you had a soft spot for Finn," Loki continued. "My feelings for him have no bearing on his ability to do his job." I tossed the dirty blankets at Loki. He caught them easily before setting them down by the door, presumably for Duncan to take to the laundry chute again. "I've never understood exactly what your relationship with him was, anyway," Loki said. I'd started putting new sheets on the bed, and he went around to the other side to help me. "Were you two dating?" "No." I shook my head. "We never dated. We were never anything." I continued to pull on the sheets, but Loki stopped, watching me. "I don't know if that's a lie or not, but I do know that he was never good enough for you." "But I suppose you think you are?" I asked with a sarcastic laugh. "No, of course I'm not good enough for you," Loki said, and I lifted my head to look up at him, surprised by his response. "But I at least try to be good enough." "You think Finn doesn't?" I asked, standing up straight. "Every time I've seen him around you, he's telling you what to do, pushing you around." He shook his head and went back to making the bed. "He wants to love you, I think, but he can't. He won't let himself, or he's incapable. And he never will." The truth of his words stung harder than I'd thought they would, and I swallowed hard. "And obviously, you need someone that loves you," Loki continued. "You love fiercely, with all your being. And you need someone that loves you the same. More than duty or the monarchy or the kingdom. More than himself even." He looked up at me then, his eyes meeting mine, darkly serious. My heart pounded in my chest, the fresh heartache replaced with something new, something warmer that made it hard for me to breathe. "But you're wrong." I shook my head. "I don't deserve that much." "On the contrary, Wendy." Loki smiled honestly, and it stirred something inside me. "You deserve all the love a man has to give." I wanted to laugh or blush or look away, but I couldn't. I was frozen in a moment with Loki, finding myself feeling things for him I didn't think I could ever feel for anyone else. "I don't know how much more laundry we can fit down the chute," Duncan said as he came back in the room, interrupting the moment. I looked away from Loki quickly and grabbed the vacuum cleaner. "Just get as much down there as you can," I told Duncan. "I'll try." He scooped up another load of bedding to send downstairs. Once he'd gone, I glanced back at Loki, but, based on the grin on his face, I'd say his earlier seriousness was gone. "You know, Princess, instead of making that bed, we could close the door and have a roll around in it." Loki wagged his eyebrows. "What do you say?" Rolling my eyes, I turned on the vacuum cleaner to drown out the conversation. "I'll take that as a maybe later!" Loki shouted over it.

What bothers me is when it’s not deserved. When it’s not even true. If there’s no dirty laundry around, the media will drag a freshly starched shirt through the shit and create their own. Here’s an oxymoron for you: journalistic integrity.

I chose to ink myself… to ink others, because it speaks to me. I crave bringing a piece of another person up out to their skin with my art. To me, tattooing means I touch someone’s heart and find who they are, leaving it behind after I am done.

I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on my son’s floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. I inhaled it long and hard, wanting to permanently implant all of him in my brain, to make him last forever.

door, I caught the edge of her scent: wet dirt and grass and cigarette smoke, and beneath that the vestiges of vanilla-scented skin lotion. She flooded into my present, and only tact kept me from burying my face in the dirty laundry overfilling the hamper by her dresser.

But as self-conscious as he is about appearing normal, he doesn’t want a relationship for propriety’s sake: he wants it because he has realized he is lonely. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest.

We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are—no hiding, no acting, no fear. We come with our materialism, our pride, our petty grievances against our neighbors, our hypocritical disdain for those judgmental people in the church next door. We come with our fear of death, our desperation to be loved, our troubled marriages, our persistent doubts, our preoccupation with status and image. We come with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale. We come to air our dirty laundry before God and everybody because when we do it together we don’t have to be afraid.

But as self-conscious as he is about appearing normal, he doesn't want a relationship for propriety;s sake: he want is because he has relaxed he is lonely. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling.

But as self-conscious as he is about appearing normal, he doesn't want a relationship for propriety's sake: he want is because he has relaxed he is lonely. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling.

He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling. People make it sound so easy, as if the decision to want it is the most difficult part of the process. But he knows better: being in a relationship would mean exposing himself to someone

What if his advisor found out? Would getting caught having public sex do something to his teaching assistantship? Would he still be able to get a job? Would getting felt up in a laundromat inadvertently lead to him living on the streets, starving and exposed, selling his body for sex, which meant he would contract a disease and die?

Our community deserves leaders who should know what debates and arguments are better conducted out of the public eye, instead of dumping their baskets of dirty laundry all over the internet. Our community deserves leaders who do not put political expedience or convenience before their commitments to those they supposedly represent. Our community deserves leaders who do not make about-turns on issues such as freedom of speech and accountability to the community they serve when it becomes too embarrassing for them, or too uncomfortable. Our community deserves leaders who can and want to work together, not fling their handbags at each other, hissing like drama queens.

Rory, I want to say that death is what you've always wanted. But that can't be the Truth. [This time] we can blame it on me. I'll be the packing mule, carry all the burden. & you, you can be a child again; fold your church hands like dirty laundry [crease them tight]. Nobody has to know about us, not my father nor yours -- No, not even God

I’ll give her just what she needs . . . a hard fucking with her at my mercy. Hell, that’s what I need

Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it’s a messy one, at that.

Opportunity isn't at the end of the rainbow. It's in the deli section when no ones looking.

It was an intensely lonely moment, like all of eighth grade condensed into one claustrophobic second.

Adam could imagine what he looked like: a debauched nerd.

Louisa raised an eyebrow. "Is he—how shall I put it delicately—a simple man?

Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it's a messy one, at that.

Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it’s a messy one, at that.

When life hands one a fierce Southern-born woman who’d whipped eight boys into adulthood, one does what she says.

The surprise came a few months later when Slash called me and wanted to follow up on my offer to help him get some free guitars. “You want me to help you get guitars after you went around saying all that shit about me behind my back?” Slash got real quiet. “You know, one thing you’re going to have to learn is not to air your dirty laundry in public. Nice knowing you. Go fuck yourself.

When I’m finished, I have a sense of accomplishment. A sense of competence. I am good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it’s a religious experience, you know. Water, earth, fire—polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles—round and round—beginning and end—Alpha and Omega, amen. I am in touch with the GREAT SOMETHING-OR-OTHER. For a moment, at least, life is tidy and has meaning.

The bottoms of my sneakers were now covered in enough resin to make a hashball, and I had a white poodle mix dangling from a baby carrier across my belly. If I were still a cop, I’d haul me in just on principle.

I could fill this entire book with Mr. Trump’s dirty laundry list of proven lies, but his most zealous disciples are sure to just cite one or another in fake defense, or else deny the very possibility that fact can be known from fantasy at all, or perhaps make both claims at once. For the Trumpist, there is no objective truth, or at least no real responsibility to it. There is only 'my opinion,' more or less fun, more or less useful.

processing grief is some of the hardest work you’ll ever do. Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it’s a messy one, at that.

least.” “I don’t remember you complaining.” “Yes, well, I’d only been fantasizing about it for ages.” “See, there’s a thing,” Alex points out. “You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.” “It’s hardly the same.” He rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, “Baby.” It’s become a thing: baby. He knows it’s become a thing. He’s slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he’s not above playing dirty here. There’s a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in a window. “It’s, ah. It’s not the best time,” he says. “How did you put it? Nutso family stuff.” Alex purses his lips, bites down on his cheek. There it is. He’s wondered when Henry would finally start talking about the royal family. He makes oblique references to Philip being wound so tight as to double as an atomic clock, or to his grandmother’s disapproval, and he mentions Bea as often as Alex mentions June, but Alex knows there’s more to it than that. He couldn’t tell you when he started noticing, though, just like he doesn’t know when he started ticking off the days of Henry’s moods. “Ah,” he says. “I see.” “I don’t suppose you keep up with any British tabloids, do you?” “Not if I can help it.” Henry offers the bitterest of laughs. “Well, the Daily Mail has always had a bit of an affinity for airing our dirty laundry. They, er, they gave my sister this nickname years ago. ‘The Powder Princess.’” A ding of recognition. “Because of the…” “Yes, the cocaine, Alex.” “Okay, that does sound familiar.” Henry sighs. “Well, someone’s managed to bypass security to spray paint ‘Powder Princess’ on the side of her car.” “Shit,” Alex says. “And she’s not taking it well?” “Bea?” Henry laughs, a little more genuinely this time. “No, she doesn’t usually care about those things. She’s fine. More shaken up that someone got past security than anything.

When you wear fishnet stockings to the grocery store, people tend to stare. Women look at you like you’re affiliated with the sex trade. Men pretend they’re not staring, doing so all the while. It’s probably because they’re thinking the same thing.

He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling. People make it sound so easy, as if the decision to want it is the most difficult part of the process. But he knows better: being in a relationship would mean exposing himself to someone...But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he’s built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he ready to endure? He doesn’t know; he is afraid of discovering the answer.

I remember you organized the big laundry party and all of our friends took their dirty clothes to the laundromat and drank wine out of a wineskin until the manager threw us out because you kept yelling that there ought to be a prize given to the owner of the biggest pair of boxer shorts.

But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.

Years ago, someone asked me what I would say to my younger self if I could. Without hesitating I answered: “That’s easy. I’d have said, ‘Be quiet.’” Not forever. But until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens. Until I understood that words have consequences, and they last a really long time.

in life you’ll surround yourself with good company sometimes, however, the best company will be yourself. we might as well learn to accept the quiet, acknowledge the stillness, shake hands with the discomfort and declare it safe. because truth be told, if we aren’t safe alone with ourselves, we probably won't be with anyone else.

I asked her to tell me what the best moment of her life had been Did she? Yes, she told me about a trip the two of you had taken to Europe together right after you graduated from high school. Pascal in Paris, it had been a dream of hers to visit Pascal’s grave. On that trip she finally did. I’d never seen her so excited. That wasn’t it. It wasn’t? No, it was in a hostel in Venice. The two of you had been travelling for a couple of weeks and all of your clothes were filthy. You didn’t mind the dirty clothes very much. Lila said you were able to roll with the punches and for you, everything about the trip, even the dirty laundry, was a great adventure. But Lila liked things a certain way, and she hated being dirty. That day she had gone off in search of a laundry mat but hadn’t been able to find one. You were sleeping in a room with a dozen bunks, women and men together. In the middle of the night Lila woke up and realized you weren’t in your bed. She thought you must have gone to the bathroom, but after a couple minutes when you hadn’t returned she became worried. She climbed down from her bunk and went to the bathroom to find you, you weren’t there. She wondered up and down the hallway softly calling your name. A few of the rooms were private and had the doors closed. As she became increasingly worried she began putting her ear to those doors listening for you. Then she heard banging down below. Alarmed she went down the dark stairwell to the basement. She saw you before you saw her. You were working in the dim light of a single blub standing over an old hand operated washing machine. She asked what you were doing, what does it look like you said smiling. What Lila remembered from that night was that you actually looked happy to be standing there in the cold basement in the middle of the night washing clothes by hand. And she knew you wouldn’t have minded wearing dirty clothes for another week or two, you were doing it for her. She said that. Yes when I asked her what the best moment of her life had been she had told me that story. But it was nothing. To her it was.

But as self-conscious as he is about appearing normal, he doesn’t want a relationship for propriety’s sake: he wants it because he has realized he is lonely. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling. People make it sound so easy, as if the decision to want it is the most difficult part of the process. But he knows better: being in a relationship would mean exposing himself to someone...But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he’s built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he ready to endure? He doesn’t know; he is afraid of discovering the answer.

THE City of Angels operated mostly on a grid pattern, with a few winding streets tossed in to fuck up a tourist trying to get from Hollywood to downtown. Adding to the confusion are three of the worst intersected freeways known to mankind. An innocent stranger to the molasses gridlock around the downtown exits could unsuspectingly take the wrong course among the five hundred options available amid the endless construction and find himself circling the area, hopelessly lost until he either ran out of gas or went mad from the hell he couldn’t escape. Bobby was dead certain many of the street people trudging through downtown muttering to themselves were actually motorists who finally abandoned their cars and set to walking the cement and steel desert until the end of their days. I wasn’t all together certain he was wrong.

Some people cannot afford to believe that this country isn’t that bad, that as Hillary Clinton said, “America is great because America is good.” America hasn’t always been good. And the greatness, the power and wealth that white people have been afforded, did in fact, as Trump dog whistles with his “Make America Great Again” slogan, come from centuries of killing or otherwise exploiting and subjugating Native Americans, black people, poor people, women, immigrants. It is actually quite difficult to be good, to clean up the dirty laundry rather than let it accumulate on the floor. Everyone would like to believe that they would have been a stop on the Underground Railroad or hidden a Jewish family in their attic. No one wants to believe they’d have been the slave owner or a part of the crowd that gathered to watch the lynchings because it was something to do, or even the person who didn’t go, but didn’t do anything to stop it either.

The idea is to intentionally design a relaxing environment that is off-limits to many of the stresses and distractions that define your waking hours. Begin with aesthetics, making an effort to keep your bedroom neat and attractive. In other words, aim for Southern Living in your private quarters even if the rest of your house looks like Mechanics Weekly. Then begin to work on behaviors, keeping your bedroom off-limits to activities other than sleeping, relaxing, or making love. Nix the stacks of unpaid bills, piles of dirty laundry, collections of unread newspapers, and file folders from the office. By fostering this kind of space, seemingly untouched by the nitty gritty of daily life, you will have created a quiet haven where-by simply stepping inside and closing the door behind you-you can take a mini-vacation from stress. This time can then be used to pray, to relax, or to lavish your undivided romantic attentions on your husband.

Then you clean it up! I’m sick of cleaning it and having you come in and mess it up again,’ Hud would say. ‘I’m not your maid.’ ‘You are, though,’ Jay would say. ‘Just like I’m the fluff and fold around here.’ Jay was in charge of the laundry. He handled his sisters’ underwear and bathing suits with chopsticks, unwilling to touch them whether they were clean or dirty. But Jay quickly became a wiz at stain removal, each mark a puzzle to solve. He threw himself into searching the right combination of liquids that would unlock the dirt from Kit’s soccer shorts. He found the golden ticket by asking an older woman in the laundry aisle what she did to get out grass stains. Turned out it was Fels-Naptha. Worked like a charm. ‘Look at this, motherfucker!’ Jay called out to the rest of the house one day from the garage. ‘Good as fucking new!’ Kit peeked her head in to see her white shorts bright as the sun, unblemished. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can open Riva’s Laundry.

As I reflect back on all of the years of our family’s life together, what I remember best is not the mountains of dirty dishes and pots and pans and socks left on the floor and piles of laundry. I reflect instead on precious times shared with Clay, the kids, and those we welcomed into our home—snuggling on the couch together, nursing babies and rocking them to sleep, sharing movies and huge bowls of popcorn, comforting children after a nightmare, and all those heartfelt kisses and cards that said “I love you!

How does God’s apparent ability to drop something out of His mind like dirty clothes through a laundry chute fit into His omniscience, His infinite ability to know all things? I believe that if God’s primary way of remembering is to act on behalf of what He remembers, His primary way of remembering no more is to no longer act on that memory. God remembers our sins no more because the work of the cross already has. No further sacrifice remains for sin because the work has already been accomplished. Therefore, God need never act again on their behalf.

I followed him down the hall and into his room. He closed the door and tossed my dirty clothes into his hamper. “Don’t do that! I’ll take them home and wash them,” I tried to grab for them but Caeden grabbed my hands instead. “It’s fine,” he kissed the side of my mouth while I squirmed in his grasp. “Caeden, your mom doesn’t need to clean my dirty clothes.” “It’s not a problem. Besides,” he said huskily in my ear, “my mom doesn’t do my laundry. I do my own, just like a big boy.” I laughed. “And you know what else?” his lips brushed my ear. “What?” “I even make my own bed.

WHENEVER I WOKE UP, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed. I’d get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again. I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by. When I thought of it, I ordered delivery from the Thai restaurant across the street, or a tuna salad platter from the diner on First Avenue. I’d wake up to find voice messages on my cell phone from salons or spas confirming appointments I’d booked in my sleep. I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people. Early on in this phase, I had my dirty laundry picked up and clean laundry delivered once a week. It was a comfort to me to hear the torn plastic bags rustle in the draft from the living room windows. I liked catching whiffs of the fresh laundry smell while I dozed off on the sofa.

Do you think she's going to hang out your dirty laundry for all to see?" "How can you say she has sense after what she pulled today? Bah! You don't know what you're talking about." "What Willow did today was nothing more than an act of rebellion, a way to let off steam and let you know, in the only way she knew how, that your treatment of her is entirely unacceptable." "Woman, what you need is a man, then maybe you wouldn't be putting your nose in everybody's business." "Why,Mr. Vaughn, are you applying for the job?" Miriam asked, with an ill-humored smile. "Hell,no!" "Then I suggest you leave my personal life out of this. My life is in perfect order, which is more than can be said for yours!" Owen grunted and took a pull on his pipe. Well aware of his bold perusal, Miriam attacked her darning as if it were infinitely more engaging than any conversation with the man across the room from her. Owen wasn't a handsome man by any standards with his bearlike build and ruddy complexion. And heaven knew he wasn't very likeable either. Thus, Miriam was at a complete loss to explain her powerful attraction to him. Good heavens, she thought, I haven't felt so giddy since that time on my eighteenth birthday when Hiriam pulled me behind Aunt Harriet's coachhouse and we... The landlady's face reddened.

So as I’m walking up and down the grocery aisles, I notice this distinct, mildewy, putrid odor following me. And I keep looking around for the responsible party, until I discover that she is me. I stink. When I get home, Craig rolls out of bed to help me with the groceries and I say “Honey, smell me. I stink.” And he sniffs my shirt and says without surprise, “Yes, you do.” And I say “Well, what IS that? It’s disgusting.” And he says the following: “It’s mildew. All our clothes smell like that. We always stink.” I’ll just give you a few seconds to digest that information. I know I needed a little time. “WHAT? WELL WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME, HUSBAND?” “I was scared to tell you. You get sensitive about …. housekeeping stuff.” “Oh. So let me clarify here. You’d rather reek all day at work and allow Chase to be THE STINKY KID IN CLASS than risk me getting mad? “Yes. Yes, I would. Definitely.

That hidden economy, which still exists today, is one of love. There is self-interest, certainly, in all of these women's endeavors; for their trouble, they get shelter and food. But you don't do any of that - the mind-numbing care of small children, the endless repetition of cooking and laundry, the indignity of having a mind as fine as any man's and no opportunity to exercise it - without love. Either love for the owners of the dirty underwear and the sticky little hands, or love for people whose survival depends on the pittance you make for doing it. Almost three hundred years after Dam Smith was born, women still dominate the "caring professions" - teaching, nursing, social work - and are scarce in positions of financial or political power. Married women who work full-time still do substantially more cleaning, food preparation, and child-engagement tasks than their male partners. And when professional women's work becomes too time consuming, the care of children and the household isn't shared more equally with male partners, but outsourced to other women, frequently poor women of color. It is men who are raised to participate in a strict economy of self-interest. Most women could never afford that.

An unexpected sight opens in front of my eyes, a sight I cannot ignore. Instead of the calm waters in front of the fortress, the rear side offers a view of a different sea—the sea of small, dark streets and alleys—like an intricate puzzle. The breathtaking scenery visible from the other side had been replaced by the panorama of poverty–stricken streets, crumbling house walls, and dilapidated facades that struggle to hide the building materials beneath them. It reminds me of the ghettos in Barcelona, the ghettos I came to know far too well. I take a deep breath and look for a sign of life—a life not affected by its surroundings. Nothing. Down, between the rows of dirty dwellings stretches a clothesline. Heavy with the freshly washed laundry it droops down, droplets of water trickling onto the soiled pavement from its burden. Around the corner, a group of filthy children plays with a semi–deflated soccer ball—it makes a funny sound as it bounces off the wall—plunk, plunk. A man sitting on a staircase puts out a cigarette; he coughs, spits phlegm on the sidewalk, and lights a new one. A mucky dog wanders to a house, lifts his leg, and pisses on it. His urine flows down the wall and onto the street, forming a puddle on the pavement. The children run about, stepping in the piss, unconcerned. An old woman watches from the window, her large breasts hanging over the windowsill for the world to see. Une vie ordinaire, a mundane life...life in its purest. These streets bring me back to all the places I had escaped when I sneaked onto the ferry. The same feeling of conformity within despair, conformity with their destiny, prearranged long before these people were born. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever disturbs the gloomy corners of the underworld. Tucked away from the bright lights, tucked away from the shiny pavers on the promenade, hidden from the eyes of the tourists, the misery thrives. I cannot help but think of myself—only a few weeks ago my life was not much different from the view in front of my eyes. Yet, there is a certain peace soaring from these streets, a peace embedded in each cobblestone, in each rotten wall. The peace of men, unconcerned with the rest of the world, disturbed neither by global issues, nor by the stock market prices. A peace so ancient that it can only be found in the few corners of the world that remain unchanged for centuries. This is one of the places. I miss the intricacy of the street, I miss the feeling of excitement and danger melted together into one exceptional, nonconforming emotion. There is the real—the street; and then there is all the other—the removed. I am now on the other side of reality, unable to reach out with my hand and touch the pure life. I miss the street.