Bathroom for Improvement

Really, I'm only writing because I haven't in a few days. Lately it seems to be harder and harder to come up with something. And most of what I come up with seems hardly worthwhile at all. Still I have to write something, because otherwise - otherwise - well, because otherwise I won't be writing anything.

If this isn't a perfect metaphor for life, I'd like to know what is.

One of the problems is that what's been on my mind a lot lately is public restrooms. Have you ever tried writing something meaningful about public restrooms? Something that really speaks to the human condition? Something really (sorry) moving??

Public restrooms are an even better metaphor for the pointless and ephemeral nature of human existence than blogging is. You meet people in bathrooms; you can have conversations with them. You can learn to hate strangers anonymously in a public bathroom. You can be angry, territorial, or very, very afraid. You can marvel at the injustices with which life is fraught. Did I ever mention that the president of the internet marketing company I worked for in Corpus never washed her hands after going? Even #2?!? Well, it's true, I'm sorry to say.

I don't know if men's restrooms are so enlightening. I still suspect that urinals are the product of a demented joke played on mankind by some long-dead, self-made designer who was bitter about being barred from architecture school because of her sex. I imagine her in a room full of other early feminists, all sipping cosmos. "I'm going to design the first public restroom for men," she tells them exultingly, "where they all have to pee in plain sight of each other!"

The other women laugh, because of course no sane person would ever do this. But our architect insists - perhaps placing a substantial bet with her friends - that she can bring male society to such a nadir that eventually, they will stand next to one another to pee, vulnerable, exposed - and think this is perfectly normal behavior.

This was after a lot of cosmos, so she was more surprised than anybody when she won.

I get pissed off at work now because the no-count bitchez from right across the hall, who work in an inferior, bureaucratic division where the restroom is darker and more cramped, like to come over to our side to use the facilities. They commit such atrocities as hogging the sink, splashing water everywhere, the unspeakable "hoversquat," and using the handicapped door button to open the door so they don't have to touch the handle, which, ew! might have germs! omg!!1!!1! This leaves the door wide open to the elevator lobby for about ten seconds - not the end of the world, but not very considerate to anyone who may be trying to perform some reasonably private function inside.

But that's not the one that really pisses me off. No. What really bugs me is that these bureaucrettes always insist on taking up the handicapped stall for their, um, lengthier visits. Since our building doesn't have a locker room, and many of us in the far superior, classier division where I work are into regular exercise, and therefore have to change clothes once or twice a day, this means we get relegated to the smaller stalls, where on several occasions I personally have come perilously close to dropping my scrunchie in the toilet.

File that away for future reference, would you? That has to be a euphemism for something - though, I have to say, probably something that goes on in the men's room.