The first public bathroom I took note of was at a French restaurant on Columbus Avenue, near where I grew up. My parents and I were out to dinner with family friends — blustery socialites with haughty eyes — and my mother commented on the glacial pace of my puberty. “Look at those little mustache hairs,” she said. “I wonder if you’ll ever need to shave.” An intense desire to escape her overcame me, and I scurried past the waitstaff and found a bathroom at the back of the restaurant. I stayed there awhile, relishing its warrenlike calm. The lighting was soft, and the mirrors didn’t intrude. In time, someone flushed the urinal, and the flush sounded like “shhhh.” There were no baleful gazes here, no language games — just a measure of peace.
Once I was attuned to the solace of public bathrooms, I began to look forward to them. Awkwardness in any social setting was always a talent of mine: I rarely knew what to say at gatherings, or even whose turn it was to speak. I relied on stock phrases from sitcoms to get me through, and when this strategy failed and anxiety pounced, I sought out bathrooms. This impulse followed me from adolescence into young adulthood. Bathrooms offered me space and time to gather my thoughts. When a party got too loud, when studying at the library gave me a headache, when a date was going poorly because I was muttering about Martin Amis into my cheeseburger, I could excuse myself and take a minute. All the office jobs I’ve had were salvaged by toilet breaks. I once had a co-worker who would tear people apart in meetings, and then, a short while later, I would see his loafers peeking out from under the stall at an obtuse angle. If this tyrant needed to be pants-around-ankles like everybody else, why did I fear him so?
In time, I came to appreciate other types of bathrooms: not just the quiet, meditative closets, but also big public spaces, despite how unsanitary they can be. I loved watching harried travelers at the airport try to keep their suitcases from rolling into the next stall. I was thrilled when moviegoers came hobbling out of a three-hour crime epic groaning in relief as they discussed their favorite action sequence. In bus terminals, people brushed their teeth at the sink. At Chuck E. Cheese, they changed their soaking-wet babies. These bathrooms were public yet private, social yet intimate. And I, who had never known how to navigate a rudimentary birthday party, felt comfortable in such liminal realms. The rules were clear, the expectations were low and the camaraderie seemed genuine, if discreet.
I remember the industrial men’s rooms at Shea Stadium, where Mets fans, full of beer and hot dogs, burst in between innings and used communal troughs that ran the length of the room, chattering about the double play they just witnessed, or, if they were rooting for the away team, not talking at all. Often the gathered men would strike up a chorus of “Let’s Go Mets!” I could never have chanted along in the stands, where I always felt as if I were on display, but my shyness retreated in the bathroom.
My favorite public bathroom of all time lies on the lower level of Grand Central Terminal. Twenty years ago I would pass through there on weekend mornings, on my way to tutor the scions of Fairfield County in Connecticut. Post-muffin, pre-boarding, I descended to the basement, where businessmen in suits tinkled, tooted and performed their wiggle dances alongside the drunk and bedraggled, who could access the facility without needing to purchase a ticket. It smelled foul. Fluids trickled along the floor. Yet no one called anyone else out. Soon the men in suits would return to the main concourse, with its vaunted ceiling and famous oyster bar. Everyone else would descend into the subway. But for a moment, they were all in the same dirty room, and public space seemed to give rise to a real public. In a world where the wealthy pay others to grocery-shop for them and deliver their takeout, this kind of space can feel increasingly rare.
Of course, public bathrooms are frequently disgusting. Nobody is excited to use the bathroom at a gas station or a public park, which seem to be cleaned on an annual cadence. (I’ve never seen the inside of a New York City subway restroom. As far as I can tell, they are permanently locked.) What does it say about me that I am undeterred, even tickled, by such filth?
Did I suffer an abiding trauma in a bathroom at a young age? Do I have a scatological bent? Does a coulomb of sexual charge shoot through me when I’m in a stall?
The answers to these questions are no, no and … not as of yet. So why bathrooms? Certainly there are other places where I could enjoy social interaction at a remove: a diner, say, or a bookstore. The trouble is, these spaces have their own peculiar sense of propriety. Little dramas are acted out. If I order a third refill of coffee at a diner, my anxiety tells me, the waiter will slap the bill on the table. If I dare to thumb through a copy of “Prufrock” at a bookstore, the person browsing next to me will roll their eyes.
In the bathroom, there is no pretense. The ineluctably human smells and sounds are a welcome reminder that whatever games I’m trying and failing to play elsewhere become moot when the door swings shut. I take a breath. I glance around. The world is full of people just like me.
David Yourdon is a Toronto-based writer. He is currently working on a novel.
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