Why a journal dedicated to mens rooms? A good question, but I think you know the answer. How often do you enter an establishment with a sense of unease? Is it that meeting you’re about to have? Perhaps there’s an attractive person walking by and you just don’t know how to make yourself known. There could be a whole lot of stuff which influences your comfort level in a place. For instance, how many times have you entered a restaurant and then suddenly had the unexplainable desire to bolt the hell out? I’ll bet it’s happened to you a lot. Or the last time you visited a doctor’s office for the first time – did you just get this sinking feeling of dread? No doubt you did. Well there are a number of factors to explore here, and let’s get to it.
You may have a sixth sense that the toilet is going to be a dump, and you don’t want to find yourself in a stall where the lock doesn’t work, and there’s nothing but paper towels to wipe with when you’re finished. I would drive an hour to find a good toilet, and I really don’t care where it is. I’ve done my business in a parking lot, and I mean a nasty number two, just because I couldn’t find a toilet. It wasn’t pleasant, but it sure beats putting a spot on the front seat. We need to know that there’s a place we can go – that’s just the bottom line. You’ll never find a lousy bathroom in a casino – it just doesn’t happen. Good places to make your product are simply good business. Although, I still don’t know why gas stations, by and large don’t get it. On the other hand, when you need to fill up, and there aren’t many choices – well they can pretty much give you any sort of pot to make wee wee in and it’ll suffice. I don’t think I’ve ever made a poopy at a gas station, though. Don’t know why – maybe it’s a fear that some guy with dragons painted on his chest is going to make me remember my name.
This publication is dedicated to the interests of every man with a functioning urethra and/or sphincter. (If you’re doing it some other way, we’d like to know about it). We will employ a ratings system for bathrooms, and will apply different standards to different establishments – it’s only fair to compare office buildings with office buildings, for instance. Lastly, if for no other purpose, this is just something to read when you’re sitting on the pot. And lord knows, there’s plenty to read, but what really makes you want to make? We hope this does.
Chaimster
11/1/01
There are toilets, and there are toilets
The events of 9/11 have left us devastated. Not to belittle the human tragedy, but there are many dimensions to the losses incurred on that fateful day in late summer 2001. Think of all the bathrooms wrecked, crushed into smithereens when the WTC collapsed. How many poor souls were making their last “installments” when the walls came tumbling down? More than a few, I’ll bet. I’ve never been to the Trade Center, though I flew really close to it once in a 20 seater flight from JFK up to Albany. What a place! And the Pentagon - a few good bathrooms lost there too. I don’t mean to imply that just because a bathroom is in an executive office building that it’s superior. Not by any measure, whatsoever. But let’s be serious – there are places we like to, even look forward to making our mark. And then there are places we just avoid like Anthrax, if such a thing can be avoided. For instance, I don’t trust the sanitation of any bathroom with a vinyl or linoleum flooring. It can’t be cleaned properly – ever. I am also very skeptical of Formica or wood fixtures near the sink. They are a breeding ground for microscopic critters! I prefer tile and stone, in almost every instance.
Now style is a different matter entirely. I can be turned off by a dirty bathroom, regardless of it’s construction. The bathroom at Hackett Middle School in Albany New York, for instance is the biggest dump I’ve ever been to, period. You’ll probably hear lots about that hell hole, if you peruse this journal frequently enough. A cavernous space it was, made of marble and tile, and it was the most horrible place – I shudder to think about it. I spent what amounted to hours in the nurse’s office, but not using the bathroom. No, good ole Ms. Lambombard was a very kind person. I came to her complaining of a stomach ache on many occasions. She had the good sense to understand that I needed to squeeze out some byproduct. On those days it was home where I ended up doing my thing. Yes, that kindly blonde nurse would dutifully call my mom at work. I would then be sent home and would arrive just in time to run to the bathroom and let out a weapon of mass distinction. My father once caught me home at one of these moments and he was ready to kick my ass from there to Schenectady. “Go to school!” he barked, and rightfully so. But whose fault was it?
A school which cannot maintain its bathrooms is asking for disaster. Schools are where kids become social animals. Any commode or water closet needs to have some semblance of cleanliness to be useful. It’s tough to mask the smell of fecal material, let alone radiator encrusted pee pee. And just imaging such an element in the dead of winter, steaming like a locomotive; the stench is enough to make you yearn for the below zero cold. The bathroom at a school needs to be a safe, clean and well maintained environment. A child craves comfort and quiet when he’s eliminating. Imagine you’re in Algebra class and the need to poo has been percolating for some time. You can’t hold it any longer and you politely raise your hand in order to duck out to the john. You expect something well lit and clean, if not offering some privacy. What you find is something shockingly different. To have kaka shmeared on the walls is rather distracting, if not plainly horrific. I’ve heard holocaust survivors describe bathrooms in concentration camps; stories with which I can marginally identify due to my “time” at Hackett. The stalls had no doors, and most of the toilets had no seats. We might as well have been sent to a subway platform and told to lower our trousers, our butts aiming for the wall. It was that bad. I needed to crap and I went home. I didn’t really care that it cost me a year of Algebra, which I had to make up the next summer. Perhaps it was some method of avoiding my charmingly cruel teacher, Mr. Prozik.
5/30/03
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