Take a look at this:
What do you think? A lost Warhol? A pop-art sculpture immortalizing the Rolling Stones? A sexy little synecdoche dedicated to the beauty and allure of glamorous women the world over?
Okay, now look at it in context:
Yeah. That's right. It's a urinal.
I'd actually seen these on the web before, when a businessman in Vienna got a lot of flack over having these installed in the men's room. I shook my head and chuckled, thinking to myself, "Man, those weird, wacky Europeans. I guess that's what too much wine and cheese and a couple of World Wars will do to a culture! Kooky!"
But then recently at a meeting with a friend at a local bar, less than a mile from my house, I excused myself to the bathroom and found myself crotch-to-face with a couple of these beauties.
The bar is not a strip club. It's not a Hooters. It's not anywhere close to an adult toy store or porn shop. It's a regular, nice, inoffensive watering hole with a cool bar, nice tables and booths, and live music most nights of the week--not even rock bands, but "a guy and his guitar on a stool" type stuff. The kind of place you wouldn't think twice about taking your parents and friends for a post-dinner drink.
Unless you think your Dad might have to urinate at some point in the evening.
What is one supposed to make of this? Is it meant to be funny? Charming? Sexy? Was it meant to give patrons a funhouse shock, like stepping on one of those buzzer plates or air-blasters that give you a little scare before you see the humor and laugh it off? A practical joke to play on friends?
I got the shock, but then I stood there, staring. I wasn't laughing.
The sole stall in the men's room was occupied, and with a couple of beers begging for release I found myself in an untenable position. My brain started ticking. The sensitive part of me was saying, "No, don't do it. Wait until there's another option. Be strong, be brave, be principled." The other part of my brain retorted, "C'mon, it's only a sculpture. It's not really what it looks like--you know that, you're not making some symbolic attack on womankind or getting disgusting vengeance on ex-girlfriends who wouldn't put out and dumped you like a Tonka truck before making it like bunnies with the very next guy they dated. You're just peeing."
My angel brain replied, "That's not the point--the very act makes you complicit in the tastelessness of the whole enterprise! Stand tall! Refuse!"
My animal brain retorted, "I just got a report from the Bladder, and there's some low-level flooding down there. You'd better do something and fast!"
My angel brain has never had a good W/L record against my animal brain, so in the end, I did it. It was a somewhat surreal experience--I found my tipsy thoughts turning to nights in the theater watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show, red lips on a sea of black, disembodied and big enough to swallow you whole. I wondered if a prankster behind the scenes could pull a lever and make the teeth-ridges slam shut, causing cardiac arrest and comical side-spray. I could imagine video of such an experience showing up on YouTube, me becoming famous in a humiliating and soul-crushing way. Like the Numa-Numa kid.
Luckily none of that happened. But as I left I still felt very weird about it, guilty and ashamed and more than a little dirty.
And then the next time I had to go, I barely even thought about it.
There's a lesson there, I think.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
What I Didn't Want to See at my Local Bar
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6 comments:
Yes, that's awful. I'd expect it in a sex-dive bar but not in any place remotely respectable. I mean, you're peeing in a WOMAN'S MOUTH.
Some people seem remarkably ignorant about subtext, but it's not like this is a difficult one to decode.
On a somewhat related note, I was in the bathroom of a nice pub in Minneapolis. It was busy and everybody was lined up peeing, and suddenly a distorted, incomprehensible, lo-fi voice would echo around the bathroom, confusing everybody. We'd all stare at each other, like, did you say that? What the hell.
We thought the urinals were speaking to us. It wasn't until weeks later that somebody pointed out it was probably the ADVERTISEMENTS speaking.
Everything in Minneapolis speaks. During rush hour, all the parking garages say "Caution...car" over and over again, to the point where you can no longer figure out where the car is supposedly coming from.
It truly is one of those things that, the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable the whole thing makes me. Not having got a look at the toilet in the stall, now I wonder if some similar horrifying piece of septic art awaits in there.
If ever I go there again, I'm thinking of taking a voice recorder and asking random bar patrons their thoughts on the subject, until I either get punched out or asked to leave by the management. Seriously, I'm curious as to what people who are not me (i.e., "normals") think about it, if they think of it at all.
I'm always amazed when somebody at my (totally respectable) workplace sends me some sexist, off-colour email. It's like there's been a short-circuit in the critical-thinking section of their brain.
This mouth-urinal thing seems like a similar problem: the bar owner himself just thought it was HILARIOUSLY funny -- in the naive way of people who don't recognize cultural symbols or their effects on others -- and it never ocurred to him that others would find it horribly distasteful.
I like to think that I'd talk to the owner/manager and say that I found the imagery disturbing. But then...
...my favourite breakfast-restaurant has a small, framed poem on the wall called "The Day the Anglos Retired," about poor white men who are supposedly unable to find jobs because of affirmative action. I don't think many people have noticed (let alone read) this poem, but every time I see it I think I should confront the management...but then I don't.
Sigh.
I assume I'm "the friend" in question.
Funny thing is, I didn't even notice them until you pointed them out. The stink of urine removed higher thought from me. And they aren't red, they're peach colored.
Your post reminds me of the old joke we told on the playground: you're American when you go in the restroom. You're American when you come out of the restroom. What are you when you're in the restroom?
European.
Well, John, since I LINKED YOUR BLOG in the post around the words "a friend," yeah, that's a fair assumption.
Or is it too early in our relationship for me to be calling you that? ;)
And I don't think they are peach-colored--I think that was just the lighting. And in any event, I'm not sure that would make it any better.
Maybe I'll ask our barmaid next time what she thinks of the situation...
P.S.--Grow up. :)
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