I Load the Dishwasher + *BONUS AUDIO*
Last month, Luke Goebel tried to make a documentary about me while I was sick and loading the dishwasher. Here’s exactly how it went.
“You go straight to the thing that you know is the most sensitive thing for me.”—Ottessa
Luke: Hi, Ottessa, can you tell me about what you're doing?
Ottessa: Well, I'm going to put these two dirty spoons in this dishwasher from 2004 and not run it because it's empty so that you have something to put in your documentary about me.
Luke: Do you remember the first time that you ever did dishes?
Ottessa: No.
Luke: You don't have a memory of that?
Ottessa: No.
Luke: Do you remember your mom doing dishes, or your dad doing dishes, or your sister? Or the first time that you noticed someone doing them?
Ottessa: No.
Luke: What were the what were the practices in your home life and family of origin for dish-doing?
Ottessa: I'm not putting that in the documentary.
Luke: Why not? What happened?
Ottessa: It's private.
Luke: What do you feel when you walk into your mother’s house and you see the sink and dish area?
Ottessa: Why are you asking me that?
Luke: Well, I have a certain feeling when I walk into your family of origin’s house and I see the dishes.
Ottessa: It feels pretty exploitative that you're asking me that question because you said you want to maybe make a documentary. You go straight to the thing that you know is the most sensitive thing for me.
Luke: You think that the dishes at your house in the kitchen are the most sensitive thing?
Ottessa: Walking into my mother's house…
Luke: Okay, how do you feel about dishes in terms of the division of labor in your marriage around dish-doing? Has it been positive?
Ottessa: To be perfectly honest, I don't want to talk about dishes. This isn't really very interesting for me. When you talk to, like, a professional dish-doer or something –
Luke: How do you feel about professional dish-doers?
Ottessa: Someone has to do the dishes, I suppose.
Luke: Have you ever had a job doing dishes of any kind?
Ottessa: Yes, I had to do the dishes in my high school.
Luke: Oh, what was that like?
Ottessa: Well, it was fun because I got to hang out with some really cute seniors.
Luke: What year were you?
Ottessa: I was a freshman.
Luke: Do you remember any of the seniors?
Ottessa: Yeah, I kind of remember all of them.
Luke: What do you remember about them doing the dishes?
Ottessa: Oh, it was basically the equivalent of working in a kitchen with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and they are the most beautiful 17/18-year-old boys you've ever seen. They were all so weird and so innocent and dark and funny, and they were all very creative and artistic and handsome, and getting to be in a kitchen with them doing dishes was really fun.
Luke: Is there something sensual about doing dishes with other people or doing the dishes of other people?
Ottessa: No, it wasn't about that. It was about manual labor, and everyone knew exactly what they had to do. There was a rhythm to it and a method to it, but only because they were all familiar with each other.
Luke: What kind of rhythm and method had they established?
Ottessa: Well, it's like: “Okay, I'm gonna pull out the silverware, and then I'm gonna put it in this soapy tank thingy. And then you're going to put all the forks into this thing, and then all the spoons into this thing. And then you're gonna take the tray and put it into the sterilizer thing. And then you're gonna take the sterilizer thing and then put it here, and then you're gonna wait for all the stuff to cool off until you can actually touch it, and then you're going to put the clean silverware into the clean silverware container.”
Luke: Did everyone have their own station like that? Was it like a conveyor belt or a factory kind of situation with everybody doing one thing over and over? Or was it moving fluidly?
Ottessa: No. I mean, it worked better if you just stayed in your position.
Luke: An assembly line of sorts.
Ottessa: Yeah, because everyone could just relax and be like, “Okay, it's coming.”
Luke: Were they gentle and sensitive, or were they being jocular and male and banging things?
Ottessa: No, they were all so relaxed and good-natured and creative and funny; they all had a little bit of depression because they were all very intelligent, and probably their parents sucked. I don't know. I mean, I'm really just remembering this one period of time where I had kitchen duty.
Luke: Were you the only woman in the kitchen doing dishes?
Ottessa: I wasn't a woman. I was a child.
Luke: Were you the only female-identifying student in the kitchen?
Ottessa: No, there was probably a couple of other girls.
Luke: What were the first dishes that you owned after you left home?
Ottessa: A set of turquoise Fiesta wear.
Luke: What is Fiesta wear?
Ottessa: It's this heavy, brightly painted, I don't even know what it is… ceramic? It was very popular in the 50s, and then it was sort of a collector's item. And then in the 90s and early 2000s, they remanufactured them because they were hip and really bright. Anyway, my mom, I think, bought me a singular set of Fiesta wear. It came in this box from Bloomingdale's, and it was like, one dinner plate, one salad plate, one tea cup, one saucer, one mug, all the same very ugly turquoise.
Luke: Where were you living at this time?
Ottessa: My dorm room at Barnard.
Luke: Why do you think she bought you a box set from Bloomingdale's instead of giving you some of her many plates?
Ottessa: I think she probably wanted me to feel special.
Luke: Did you?
Ottessa: Yeah. Or maybe it was on sale, and maybe she was like, “Oh, I can just give this to Tessi.” I don't know, maybe I bought it.
Luke: Thank you for sharing this with me.
Here’s the recording.