You have no idea how much I love bathrooms
Quite possibly my favorite room in any house. I have always been quite at home in the bathroom. I was sitting there one afternoon and trying to figure when this interest began. I though back to my youth when my cousin and I would play in the bathroom at either my family’s home, his, or grandma’s. We would hover around the sink and mix our potions created from all the fine bottles, slimes, and powders in the cabinets below. Not concerned with how much it cost or what it could do to our skin, we filled everything we spotted into our test tube. With so much mysterious and wonderful plunder, it was fortunate that we had such a large test tube. And it looked remarkably like a family drinking water glass, hmm. Everyday was spent on the verge of a major breakthrough in science.
Any small room makes a great clubhouse. Big spaces get boring. But put me in a small room and it can become anything. The bathroom is the dominant small room. It could be a submarine or a tree fort or perhaps the wreckage of a plane on a deserted island. That one was always a favorite. It is such an isolated space, the rest of the house disappears. I could keep my mind within the game and be unconcerned with life beyond the wall. What the imagination could do to the common bathroom was unmatched.
A personal sanctuary. Anyone can walk into your bedroom. But that bathroom, under your control, is yours and yours alone. When I lost my imagination but gained my curiosity, I still enjoyed the bathroom. This was not so much about puberty as it was just having my own time. The walls remained a comforting blockade to the outside. Instead of daydreams, I could focus on clear thinking. I did not go to the bathroom because I had to think, thinking just happened to be a byproduct of going to the bathroom. Anywhere else in the home, school, or work I could always find a distraction. I am a very distracted person. The bathroom is where serious thinking takes place. I am not in conversation, there is no television or computer, no books, photographs, nothing. Nothing except for toilet paper and shampoo. Maybe once I will read the ingredients to shampoo. But once is enough. Philosophy, theology, literature, sociology, great breakthroughs in thought happen in the bathroom. If I could harness the focus native to the bathroom for daily practice, I would be a very diligent man.
Two is a crowd. Not since play dates with my cousin, has the bathroom been hospitable to more than one. Of course there is space for multiple people in these public restrooms, but it is my personal space. Does not matter if you got there first, you are in my space. With these feelings the bathroom becomes taboo. Men do not talk, and if they do, barely. They do not make eye contact, and if they do, they keep their eyes high. Ceiling is a good target, the floor if you can commit to it. This quiet dance around each other helps to maintain the illusion of personal sanctuary. It is this illusion I have grown a desire to break. In the last few years I have become interested in the awkward social dynamic of men in the bathroom. Certain folks are oblivious to this: small kids and the elderly. But for the rest, those in their prime, we just feel awkward. I like to watch this, I want to prod this, and to investigate. I feel increasingly compelled to make conversations, and sometimes I do. On occasion it works, other times people get weirded out. But usually I do not act. I think about it, and I want to, but it is so easy not to.
My New Year’s resolution was close to being a mandate that I must, when encountering another person in the restroom, always make conversation. I decided that ”always” could come back to bite my butt. It will remain instead, a barrier that I will pick at, on occasion, when I can get up the guff. But it is fun. And someday, maybe, the restroom will become the new break room or lounge area. It is at that point that I will regret my social course and long for my lost sanctuary.