I have my reasons. Most importantly, a dumbwaiter would only “seat” one, and I’d never have to worry about being ambushed when all I wanted was to be alone in a room with my pants around my ankles for five minutes before heading back to my cubicle. But considering I work in New York, The City That Never Even Winces, it’s not hard to fathom that people in the office bathroom culture would exist the same way they’d exist anywhere else—unaffected and in numbers.
In a vain attempt to ensure total privacy in the bathroom at work, I try to move swiftly. All the excitement of being at the apex of a roller coaster drop fills my insides, and it appears that I will emerge from my mission with a smile on my face and a sense of calm in my bladder.
Then I hear it—a low, muffled series of footsteps, which grow louder with each menacing tap.The door flings open, and I am foiled. It’s not long before I hear the woman on my right hit the roll so many times I’m sure she is taking a whole tree’s worth of toilet paper.The woman on my left is on her cell phone.We could be the best of friends or the most professional of co-workers on the other side of that door. But in the office john, it’s a whole new ball game.
Sometimes I win the waiting game, and my opponent goes quickly. But I should be so lucky all the time. No joke—at my last job, there was a woman who, every day at 11:15, spent no less than one half hour barefoot in the handicapped stall at the end of the row. I know this because a) I timed her once, and b) I looked under the stall to check for her feet.The pièce de résistance is that she was definitely not sitting while she was in there, because her toes faced the toilet—so I could only guess she was experiencing the rapture in her four-poster steel temple.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the bathroom equivalent of Grace Jones—all pissed off because I have to share my Studio 54 dressing room with the no-name act that precedes me. I want nothing more than to be open to sharing the bathroom and let nature take its course. I envy women who can have conversations while going, or can even proudly march to the bathroom, magazine in hand, when number two comes knocking. I suppose I could if I loved my body without reserve and positively reveled in every noise that came out of it, like the ultimate office bathroom warrior.
I was temping as a receptionist at a financial firm when I first moved to New York.The highlight of my day was getting up to go anywhere, and I welcomed even the smallest excuse to make a trip from point A to point B.The bathroom was as good a “point B” as any. One fateful instance, just as the first drop was escaping, she burst through the door.
“Is the girl who is temping at the front desk up in here?” she bellowed.
“Ummm…yes.” I felt brief comfort in the possibility that she was only there to deliver a message and she would be leaving soon.That comfort quickly dissipated when I heard the squeak of the neighboring stall door hinge, and I realized she was planning on sitting a spell.
“OK. Do not ever leave your purse on the desk when you are not there!” “OK” “Ever! Never ever ever never!” “O-K” I had been in such a hurry to assure my solitude in the bathroom that I had completely forgotten my purse was on my desk.
I thanked her and promised I’d remember next time, using the tone of voice reserved for ending a conversation. She ignored my tone and continued her fervent lecture.
“I’m sorry, I just had to tell you. Because you do not know what evil lurks…in the heart of man.Woo, excuse me!” She seriously let a big and ugly one rip with me well within earshot. It was apparent to me at this point that the evil that had once been lurking in man’s heart somehow had found its way into this lady’s digestive tract. She proceeded to elaborate on her point.
“I’m serious. Not that I’m saying anything bad…oh excuse me…about anyone here, it’s just that…ooh, craisins my enemy…you should never trust anyone because…Lord, I should write lyrics to that tune…you never…excuse me…know.”
I started to cough, trying to mask the sounds of her unfortunate encounter with dried cranberries. How embarrassing for her, I thought.
Wait—for her? She was overtly flatulent, providing commentary on said flatulence and weaving all of this between the fibers of a lecture about trust. Clearly, she was not the embarrassed party.
Maybe I’ll never be that comfortable.
Most women probably won’t, as I’m sure that’s pretty much the last thing that separates us from the boys. But she lit a fire in me, and gave me an impossibly high point to reach for—somewhere in the vicinity of total comfort and acceptance. But until I reach that point, the daily game in the ladies room continues. The claws will come out—not in front of the mirror where the combs and lipstick are drawn, but behind the slammed stall doors where awkward is king and the uncomfortable throat clearing begins.
