Bodily Functions

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am fascinated with toilets. It's not unusual for me to talk openly in mixed company about toilets, as I did when I came running out a bathroom in a small store-front theatre on Chicago's North Side:
"Dude...that has got to be the deepest toilet I have ever seen. If you dropped something in there, you would have to reach up to your shoulders to get it back."

I was always sort of interested in toilets, but once I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera, it became a full fledged obsession. One of the first places I investigate in a hotel room, new apartment or friend's home is the toilet. A lot can be understood about a person by their toilet. When my brother-in-law installed a toilet below the septic system, he had to install a pump that sucked the waste up. UP! You can hear the motor kick in as the pump activates and sends what you flush up the wall.

A particular interest of mine are toilets in public venues. You can judge how comfortable the builders assume people will be with public urination by how the construct the bathroom.

The Welsh toilets are inconsistent at best, but there are some things of note. I share a house with six people and two toilets. The upstairs toilet, where there are four of the six housemates, gets the most use, and thus is cordoned off from the tub that shares the same plumbing lines. It sits in a windowless room tucked in the far back. It's not terrible to sit in their for a while.

All three bathrooms, the two with toilets and the one without, have fans that are activated with the light switch. Interestingly, and this is something that I have not seen in the states, the fans stay on for a minute of two after the light goes off. The Welsh seem to acknowledge the fact that the smell left behind doesn't disappear once the person leaves the room.

I have lived in an all boys dorm where one bathroom was shared by an entire dorm, and I was amazed at how strong those toilets were; I understood the reason to have an uncloggable toilet, though, but nonetheless, I was amazed. The toilets in this house are equally disturbing in the ferocity of the flush. It sounds like a toilet in airplane, with violent sucking sounds, but unlike toilets on a plane, there is a rush of water that I am sure could drown a man. It's what I image those chasing Moses across the Red Sea faced once the Jews were safely on the other side.

Outside of my house, though, the bathrooms here are strange places. For one, none of the urinals have separation barriers, and most are placed awfully close together. Even with the the one urinal separation, there is still less room than most people would be comfortable with. Plus, the urinals are bowls that push a good distance into the room. I feel like I am using a low-set sink in the middle of the room. The worst though, and one I plan my day around trying to avoid, is the bathroom in the library. There is only one, despite the library being a large place. This ensures that you are never alone in the room, which causes the urinals to be problematic, though the term urinal is used loosely here. The library features the worst of all male bathroom fixtures: the trough.

I am not sure what sort of animals the library must assume we are to hang that undignified stainless steel contraption on the wall. The trough does not manage the space nor the number of people that can use the bathroom at any one time, so it is possible that, while in there, anywhere between three and ten people will squeeze in to empty their bladders at the same time. The guy yesterday peed with such velocity that I got gun shy standing near him (and I feared spray back, so I finished a little early and hustled out). The sinks are positions so close to the trough that even finished, you are forced to bear witness to another man's private acts. You then have to stand in front of the door, which swings in, to get paper towels.

One thing is certain from the bathroom at the library: the man who designed it hates people.