A bathroom blog

At school last year I heard some chick in the student union building throwing up one morning. Either she was hung over or she was bulimic. I chose to believe the former because the student union seems a rather public place to air ones eating disorder. I mean, if I wanted to I could have sat on the sink until she came out of the bathroom to identify her. Then every time I saw her in the student union and she went into the bathroom we would exchange glances. But I didn't. Maybe I looked at her shoes, but who wouldn't notice shoes facing the wrong way in the floor space between stalls? I don't remember if I saw them, anyway.

The fact that stall doors dont go all the way to the floor kind of bothers me. Theres a lot of recognition power in shoes. I hate when I'm using the bathroom and the person next to me is goin' number two. Its so embarrassing. I always half-ass the handwash and run out hoping the person wont face me. This is a kindness to her. She doesn't have to make eye contact with me and identify me as the girl who knows she just pooped and the instigator of the now unpleasant smell. She will never escape her shoes, though. I will recognize her by her feet. And she me. If stalls went all the way to the floor, as they do in dressing rooms, there would be so much more anonymity in public restrooms. A person in a dressing room needs far less privacy than one in a toilet stall. In dressing rooms you are just changing outfits. Theres nothing embarrassing that could be discovered about a person if you could see the lowest foot of their dressing room. I guess you could see if their socks were mismatched or had holes, but in a bathroom you can tell if they just threw up. No contest. Even outhouses provide more anonymity than public restrooms. In outhouses you get your own stall, and even if someone walks in right after you they don't know what you've been up to. John Candy could walk out of an outhouse and make a squished face like Eww other people are smelly and you wouldn't know if he had contributed to the unpleasantries or if he merely had to tinkle. Ha ha. Tinkle.

A few weeks ago a spokesperson for the LGBT group at UW was on a radio program advocating the designation of unisex bathrooms all around UWs campus for students who are in the process of switching genders or feel that they are one gender while looking like another. The singleton lavatory advocate even suggested that denying a person with genitals in metamorphosis is to tramp on his civil liberties. The right to piss without panic is universal. One boy interviewed said that fear of bathroom ridicule was so intense that he never, ever goes to the bathroom on campus. He holds his bladder as long as he has to. It is torture.

Excuse me but I can solve this. If you are not sure what you are but you look like a male then go into the mens restroom and use the stall, not the urinal. If you are female in appearance, all we have are stalls, so chill. All anyone can see is the bottom eight inches of your body. Even if you are female-faced and your pants hanging at your ankles reveals two inches of hairy leg nobody will assume you are male. They will assume you are vegan. As for the guy who was all constipated and dehydrated and what not, he needs to see a psychiatrist and in the meantime use one of the ever-present campus construction workers outhouses when he has to pee. There are thousands of people with thousands of different phobias, but everyone cant have society retro-fitted to their needs. I wish we could, absolutely, but the bathroom is the last place to worry about becoming fodder for gossip. People don't go into bathrooms for social purposes. Only drunkies talk between stalls. Ive never once been introduced to someone in a bathroom. If a person of questionable-looking gender walked into the bathroom I would either:
a. not notice, or
b. look at her shoes.

Bathrooms are private places. Spies always drop into bathrooms when they have to enter a building from the between-floor ventilation systems. Thats because bathrooms are like confessionals. You don't look around. You don't linger. You don't report to your friends after about what just happened to you in the bathroom. A spy can just drop into a stall and gather his thoughts before storming the Russian guards outside the bathrooms walls.

If this guy at UW is really that hung up about picking a bathroom he should just find a remote bathroom that doesn't get a lot of use. Something in the administration building basement, say. Something down a hallway that isnt even lit most of the time. Those bathrooms still get cleaned, and there are bound to be some of them.

People are all kinds of anxious about all kinds of bathroom situations because few people realize that most humans have very similar histories with bathroom situations. Everyone has to poop sometimes, or is hung over and barfs sometimes, or has to pee for a full minute sometimes. In bathroom situations anonymity is more respected than in any other aspect of life. We never hear tabloid reports of how Paris Hilton's bowels are moving. I think this is reason enough to calm the hell down about any bathroom anxieties you might have. As far as most people are concerned bathrooms afford us invisibility cloaks. I might know from your shoes that horrifying and disturbing noises were just emanating from your body, but I'm not going to tell the people with me, and Im not going to talk to you about them if I ever see you in those shoes at some restaurant. BUT I AM NOT COMFORTED BY THIS. I AM SO PARANOID THAT I MIGHT BE GOING NUMBER ONE IN A STALL SOMETIME WITH 53 TISSUE PAPERS SEPARATING ME FROM THE SEAT WHEN YOU COME WALTZING IN- WITH YOUR BLUE CONVERSE ALL STARS WITH HOT PINK LACES AND LIGHT BLUE JEAN CUFFS FRAYED AS ALL HELL AT THE HEELS -AND DO A NUMBER TWO AND THEN I WILL FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE IF YOU COME OUT OF THE STALL WHILE IM DRYING MY HANDS AND I WILL MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH YOU, THEREBY IDENTIFYING YOU FOR LIFE, AND THEN TWO HOURS LATER YOU WILL BUMP INTO ME WITH MY BOYFRIEND AND YOU KNOW MY BOYFRIEND AND YOU CHAT WITH HIM AND GIVE ME A TERRIFIED LOOK THAT I WILL REPORT TO HIM THAT YOU JUST TOOK A GIANT SHIT A FEW HOURS AGO AND IT WILL BE SO EMBARRASSING BECAUSE EVERY TIME YOU SEE HIM AFTER THAT YOU WILL KNOW THAT HE KNOWS THAT YOU ARE A DIRTY POOPER,AND YOU WILL SEARCH MY FACE FOR SIGNS THAT I STILL REMEMBER THAT DAY AND THAT IS SO MUCH PRESSURE ON ME SO WE SHOULD RESTRUCTURE ALL PUBLIC RESTROOMS SUCH THAT THE STALLS ARE COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS. WERE TALKING ABOUT CIVIL LIBERTIES HERE. ITS MY RIGHT TO AVOID SOCIAL ANXIETY.