The rim of film covering the inside of the toilet bowl made me stop and stare for a moment. The toilet looked like it hadn't been cleaned in so long the original off-white of the porcelain made the brown of the inner parts of the shitter look like some new apocalyptic disease was brewing in a stew of I-Dare-Not-Think-About-It water.
I gazed down in horror at this scene, unsure of what to do next.
Here's the thing with needing a bathroom: The stakes are always high, and will just get higher the longer one delays. Having to relieve oneself is, I think, fundamentally one of the purest forms of comedy because everyone has a shared experience.
In this particular moment, standing in this small New York City apartment bathroom, I needed to go pretty bad. However, that toilet was so disgusting I considered running back home to my apartment and peeing there.
Another tangent: I used to lick subway poles when I was younger. I played in the public playground's sandboxes (also known as the filthy kitty-litter of New York's infants). As a kid I visited Coney Island's beach as I lightly kicked syringes out of the way before settling down for a day on the surf. I am no stranger to nasty, but I have to draw a line somewhere!
The hypocrisy of my childhood was that I would NEVER sit on a public toilet seat. In fact, I got to the point of being so sceeved out by toilets and other people's bathrooms that when I went to anyone else's house I would squat over their bowl as well. My precious tush was not going anywhere near anyone else's butt-rest. It took me years, and a whole lot of research, to finally get over my phobia of other people's bathrooms.
I suddenly judged the guy whose apartment I was in. I judged him pretty hard core. I cursed his name as I stood there doing the pee-pee dance. Fuck. Fuck. Guys are GROSS. Clean your damn toilet! It's not hard! Just pick up a scrub brush and swirl it around in the bowl a couple times and voila! Sorta' clean!
I got nervous standing there any longer than a couple minutes. What if the guy thinks I'm pooping? I'm taking an awful long time just to take a leak. The thought that he might be sitting in the living room thinking that I needed to go and take a dump in the middle of our make-out session made me overcome my fear of the petrie-dish-toilet and pee.
When I got back to the living room I had to reacquaint myself with this person I thought I knew. You're toilet just said volumes about you I thought. Then, I noticed he was rubbing hand sanitizer on his hands after having just blown his nose. What. The. Fuck.
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