High-Maintenance? Or Just High?

Tonight I was reminded of why I haven't been to a Teddy and Marge show in a awhile.

"I like their music, and it's a really fun scene," I commented to Margie's friend Eric, who was sitting next to me on the concrete parking lot. "But none of the guys are cute."

"I know, right?" he said.

That's about all we agreed on, because I tend to prefer bearded, intellectual, white-collar guys who bathe frequently; and he likes the rebel type - guys who look as if they could be a little dangerous, he told me.

The girls at these shows, on the other hand, are natural beauties, assuming the ink is more or less organic. They're all wearing comfortable shoes. "One of Katie's friends was a little alarmed by your pit hair," I told Margie conversationally, before she started setting up for the show. "She went on and on about it."

Margie laughed. "I never even think about it anymore," she said.

"Do you shave?" Grady asked me - he's the "Teddy" in "Teddy and Marge," and Margie's boyfriend.

Hello! I'm wearing heels here!

So I always feel like a bit of a misfit at their shows.

Like most of the other people there, I bike to work, I get all my clothes from thrift stores, and I like the funky alternative music scene, aside from the cigarette smoke. But I think the biggest distinction between Margie and her friends and me isn't the tats, body hair, vegetarianism, or chain-smoking. It's the fact that they have no objection to using the restroom at the Opera House, even though it only has an old screen door with some tattered purple satin fabric covering most of the screening, and a hook and a nail in the doorjamb to hold it shut.

It's not that I'm too prissy to swill large quantities of Lone Star, honest. It's just that if I end up having to use the facilities, I'm going home.

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.

At the Horseshoe Lounge

From the ladies' room wall:

You should make friends with your vagina. Especially if you have a fat-ass for a husband. Did you know that the clitoris and surrounding tissue have way more nerve endings than the entire penis? It could be your new best friend (and save you from a lifetime of sexual misery). p.s. It is possible for a woman to pee standing up. Practice in the shower. It's super fun!

It's the "It's super fun!" part that makes this quote truly great.