Blog-Type Thing: Top 5

You may have noticed, if you come here at all, that I haven't been writing much. I'd like to assure my concerned readers reader that I'm not just resting on the laurels I received courtesy FlamesRising.com and the esteemed Dr. Pus.

No, I AM in fact writing, just not on this blog. I may give more details on that as it becomes appropriate or feasible, but I find that too much talk about an ongoing project usually saps my will to continue it, so the less said there, the better. In fact, I may already have said too much. So hush.

Anyhow, I thought that since I have this space anyway, and as nature hates a void so does a blogger hate not posting or being posted to, I would turn this into an actual blog-type thing and try some impromptu irrelevant but hopefully entertaining auto-verbal hornswagglery.

In the absence of real inspiration, I'm stealing a page from John Cusack circa Hi Fidelity (Hi Yourself!) and doing a top 5 list. So here it is, a hopefully educational exploration for all the ladies out there who've wondered what it's like on the other side of the ceramic tile divider.

TOP 5 THINGS THAT BUG ME ABOUT PUBLIC MEN'S RESTROOMS

(Hint: Cleanliness isn't one of them. I'm a dude.)

5. The Urinal Slump of Despair

Women are lucky they don't have to deal with urinals. I know, they have other challenges to overcome that men are likewise spared, but really: standing in open space with your hose in your hand, expected to excrete in front of anyone who walks in, with (if you're lucky) only a square of metal half the size of your torso bolted to the wall to shield your unmentionables from sight. I guess it goes back to peeing against the back wall of the barn with the other field hands, or writing in the snow with your friends, two things everyone assumes happens but that I personally have never seen done. Why guys are expected to be willing, able, and even cheerful about pissing in front of each other is beyond me.

Anyway, every now and then you'll walk in on someone in this posture, which is simultaneously depressing and disgusting. The Slumper has both hands about his business, but has leaned forward over the urinal so that his forehead is almost (and on some occasions is actually) touching the wall in front of him, just over the flushing mechanism. Like he's just given up hope, overwhelmed by existential despair and enuii, a crumpled shell of a man trickling weakly into an uncaring bowl.

Really, whenever I see this, it brings me down for the whole day. Especially since such a slumper never, but NEVER straightens in the presence of others. So great is his despair. Sigh.

4. The Samson Stance

This is similar to the USoD. While perhaps stronger and more defiant, it's no less disgusting.

The Stander takes a similar posture to the Slumper, staring down at his junk while the magic happens, but keeps himself more or less upright by putting one palm flat against the tile by the flusher and pushing off. Like Samson trying to push down the walls of the Philistine Temple. While taking a leak.

I suspect that the area above the flusher is more sanitary than the area to the side of the bowl and below (though as the father of a seven-year-old boy, I can't be entirely sure), but I still think the best practice is to touch as little as possible while peeing in public. And really, do you need that extra support to keep you from toppling forward into the urinal? Is your balance so bad that the slightest tip forward will send you sprawling? Is it really that much trouble just to stand there?

I have--but only once--seen a variation of this stance wherein the Stander pushed BOTH palms to the wall, presumably more afraid of structural collapse than side-spatter. But he was a professor of writing, and thus required to be eccentric. I guess.

3. Cell Phone Chatter

This is happening more and more often as hands-free technology advances, and thus is becoming more and more irritating. Sometimes it's those little Star-Trek things on people's ears, like Urinating Uhurus. More often it's phone call line one, penis line two.

Again: is it seriously so difficult to wait until one of the two calls (call of phone vs. call of nature) is answered before attending to the other? I think in this situation, one of the two callers should be asked to hold.

Of course that's nothing compared to those who chatter away in the stalls--opening a jar, as David Sedaris might say--which is so embarassing I can't even stay in the room when it's happening. I imagine being both the caller and the callee, and either way it's awful.

I need a bumper sticker: Hang Up and Shit.


2. The Maleficent Miasma of Doom

Sometimes you walk in, and you just want to flee. It's like a solid wall of scent, so foul and thick you can literally taste it.

Ugh.

I feel like shouting at the closed stalls, "Jesus Christ! What are you people EATING that makes you SMELL LIKE THAT?" But of course to do that I'd have to take a deep breath, which is not happening unless I'm really about to asphyxiate. Anyway, whatever diet causes this mustard-gas level toxicant, it can't be healthy. I'm thinking Fast Food Nation missed an opportunity here to exploit an area everyone would relate to.

In fact, the whole public poop thing is problematic. I mean, I understand that people get caught short. I understand that sometimes the only option is to go into one of the three stalls and TCB. But again, I don't understand how or even why people expect others to be able to do this in front of an audience, however well concealed. If I'm in that kind of emergency, and find one or more of the stalls closed--well, I go back and suffer in silence until such time as I can get some privacy. And when I walk in and all THREE are occupied, and the air is besmudged with odor most foul, it's all I can do to retain consciousness long enough to turn and dash to the water fountain. How do they do it, and why? Dear God, WHY?


1. Small Talk

Dude. DUDE. Listen to me very carefully, for I shall say this only once:

I. DO. NOT. WANT. TO. TALK. RIGHT. NOW.

I'M. BUSY.

Does this ever happen to you, ladies? Does anyone ever try to strike up conversation while you're both going tinkle? Well in men's rooms it happens ALL THE TIME. I have a hard enough time in public as it is; I don't need the extra pressure of holding up one side of a discussion while draining the main vein.

As with most things that bug me, I can express my feelings toward this best in verse. From the Sonnet Project, #16, May 9, 2006:

Why do you have to talk to me while I
am standing at the urinal trying to pee?
I think unspoken bathroom courtesy
demands your silence, and averted eye.

Can this not wait? What urgent piece of news
could overrule such common etiquette?
Good Lord, man, concentrate! Or else you'll wet
your shirt tail, to say nothing of your shoes.

I do not mean offense--what I mean is,
Give me some peace! Look only toward your feet.
I do not wish to speak while I excrete!
I do not talk while holding my penis!

I cannot think of any situation
In which I'd mix my piss and conversation.

And there you have it. Feel free to discuss and list your own top 5 bathroom problems.

Or tell me to shut up and go back to posting only poetry. I'm good either way. I'm just glad I got this off my chest. :)