Airing our (clean) laundry

One of the things I love and hate about yachting is the incessant lack of privacy.

Nine adults living in a fairly confined space, sometimes under passage or on anchor without the ability to step on land for days, sharing bathrooms and dinner utensils, hearing (or olfactorily experiencing) bodily functions of someone who is not your sibling or partner, tactfully choosing TV programs on the big screen in the common area, eating family style at least twice a day- reaching grabbing scooping big piles of gourmet food onto your plate from across the massive wooden table.
And sharing laundry bins.

When I first started back up on yachts this winter, I freelanced on a boat with 13 crew. Someone is constantly in the laundry room pulling out wet shirts and pants from one of the three washing machines and stuffing the damp load into an industrial sized dryer. The warm windowless room deep in the belly of the ship was impressive, but the machines were not what caught my attention. It was the underwear. Lacy undies and brightly colored bras hanging unapologetic above the length of the massive washing sink.
Right there in plain view of everyone who may wander in!
I also thought the food grabbing and swearing and loose cliques and playful gossip were novel.

Now I celebrate our rainbow of girly undies and bras strewn on hangers near the portholes that occasionally induce passersby to peer in, hoping to catch a glance of the lives of the rich and famous rather than the relatively young and poor (but with beautiful undergarments. At least the girls).
But we of the interior crew do the boys' underwear too. And while it may not be lacy or colorful and hanging in the common area, it is still an un-private thing to have someone else wash and fold your briefs.
The thing about giving up your privacy, letting your undies dry in public, getting used to thin bathroom walls and sharing the remote, talking about bodily functions and politics at lunch, is that after a while you go one of two ways: open and laid back, able to deal with practically any living situation, or you go misanthropic and learn how much personal space you actually need while dreaming of ways to go out in a flame of cussing glory. Of course, sometimes it goes in waves and you hopscotch back and forth between loving your fellow sailors, cheersing ciders at the local pub and sloppily slurring how lucky you are to have stumbled upon such a good group, to cursing the 6am door slamming and clankity oatmeal making, grumbling at the chip crumbs on the floor and the TV blasting incompatible-to-your-mood movies, knowing that you have to say something about that last comment so and so made about such and such that was way over the line.
On those days, when confrontation seems inevitable, you learn what kind of person you are. You can say something and air out the (sometimes filthy) laundry, you can truly let it slide off your back and off your mind, or simmer while secretly building up an arsenal of resentment to be used at a later date (see cussing flame of glory reference).
Because its not all lacy undies and late night ciders in this lifestyle. Sometimes it's dance parties on the bow and sometimes it's scrubbing toilets at 6am.
And sometimes it's like the first Real World house when the Real World was cool and dramatic.
Only this is real.
And we wash our own clothes and iron other people's sheets.
And our house floats.
And sometimes, just sometimes, with our sunnies and flops and windblown hair and heavily stamped passports, we yachties are reasonably cool, even if it is in an early 90s kind of way.