Toilets and Things

People seem to treat public bathrooms less kindly than their own. I've seen more atrocious scenes in public bathrooms than anything that I have ever produced. It's as if the anonymity of the public bathroom allows us to make an even bigger mark than we'd ever bother to make in a private, personal bathroom.

It's as if people are marking their territory like dogs on trees and cats on walls.

Of course, nobody is consciously marking proof of their existence with bodily excretions and a gross misuse of toilet paper. But some bathroom stalls seem so atrocious, so disgusting, that you think that someone put an honest effort into fucking it all up. You may never know the name of that person, or which part of the office they work in, but you will know, by default, that they exist. And that they had Mexican for lunch.

It's funny how we mask the marking of territory in our home bathrooms with potpourri, candles, soaps, and lotions, but the same "neat" people are probably the ones who smile knowingly as they leave the bathroom as you enter, finding blood on the walls and three rolls of wet toilet paper and "Kathy is a fat bitch" written in Sharpie on the door.

Broken window theory then applies to the situation: if someone leaves a roll of toilet paper on the floor, then the next person "forgets" to flush. The person after that...so on and so forth. The nicer the bathroom is, the less likely you are to leave your mark on it, and the more responsible you are for your own actions. Maybe there is some merit to crummy public bathrooms, after all.

The bathroom is the last great expression of the self, isn't it?

Poop.