Bathroom Politics

There is a certain amount of decorum expected when you walk into a ladies’ room, perhaps only because it says “Ladies Room” on the door, which seems to establish an atmosphere where ladylike behavior is expected. Based on my experience, I can only assume that the men’s room is an entirely different situation. Generally, I imagine groups of men peeing their names on the wall while others stand around the urinal as if it’s a magical fountain, talking about sports, plucking nose hairs, adjusting themselves, high-fiving each other, exchanging germs and doing other male-tastic things. I don’t get the feeling that there’s any unspoken sense of etiquette in a men’s room, other than to avoid looking left or right while “painting” your name on the wall. But in the ladies’ room, things are very different. For instance, we have stalls with locks—that’s our one option and there isn’t an alternative, such as an open trough, in which to relieve ourselves—and depending on the ladies’ room, sometimes there are little indulgences to be enjoyed, such as candles, Glade Plug-Ins, extra toilet paper, scented lotion and the seats are always down.

Of course, one of the drawbacks to this effort to maintain decorum in the ladies’ room is the propensity of passive aggressive behavior, which actualizes itself in the form of notes. There are notes on stall doors to tell you what to do with your feminine waste, notes above the toilet to remind you to ensure that all of your waste does in fact flush from sight, notes on the mirror to remind you to wash your hands, notes near the wash area to remind you to dispose of your paper towel in the appropriate receptacle, and notes on the door as you exit to remind you of your personal belongings in the event that you should be stupid enough to leave them in the bathroom. Despite always paying attention to the notes in every bathroom I’ve ever been in, I have never seen one as featured in Figure A below.

Figure A:

What kind of crazy pee-bandit instigated this type of note? When I read this, which is at least once every single day, I always think about the vague wording and how it’s strange that other women automatically know what this means while a man might look at it and think we were smearing poop on the walls. Basically, there’s a squatting sprinkle queen in my office building that is assaulting this one particular bathroom “DAILY! (sad face)” and what better way to encourage them to cease their pee-bandit ways than to post this handwritten note?

How many notes are in the men’s room? Probably none. Want to know why? Because they can pee standing up (incidentally, I’m amazed by how many things in life seem to come back to this one glaring disadvantage) and their tolerance for filth is exponentially higher in most cases. I know how women behave in a public restroom, and while I’ve experienced moments that left me genuinely disgusted and horrified, it’s a generally pleasant and polite atmosphere. However, I never really thought about what the men’s room must be like until I started sharing a bathroom with a man.

My boyfriend used to be responsible for cleaning the bathroom, I do my fair share of cleaning, but he was responsible for this one tiny room in our house because of his atrocious lack of ladylike behavior concerning the bathroom. I’ve come to realize that appropriate bathroom etiquette is an issue for most men, not just Steve, which only reconfirms my childhood belief that all boys are dirty, smelly dumbheads.

There is nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and dunking your ass in cold, dirty toilet water because the lid is up, and I think most women would agree with me on this specific type of unpleasantness. Steve and I have had many disagreements on this topic.

“If I have to lift the seat up, then why can’t you put it down?” Steve says.
“Because the seat and the lid should both always be down unless you are using the toilet!”
“But if men and women are equal, like you always say, then you should do your part in terms of lifting and lowering the lid of the toilet, right?”
“No! That’s not—no! This is a totally different issue. I’m not arguing about this anymore. Put the damn toilet seat down or I’m never making fried chicken for you ever again!”

When you share a bathroom with a man there is also the constant dusting of facial hair debris covering every surface, the dirty, discarded boxers and undershirts piled in the corner, once white bathmats are now beige because of carelessly muddy feet tracking dirt in, and don’t even get me started on replacing the empty roll of toilet paper with a full roll (not just setting it on top of the empty roll – this does not count). While my complaints are many, I never really considered the torture I was inflicting on the bathroom until the day the drain clogged.

“Um, so, I think there’s something wrong with the shower…” I said, drying my hair with a towel.
“What do you mean?” Steve said.
“Well, it just filled up with water while I was in there,” I said.
“The tub?”
“No, I was showering,” I said.
“Yeah, I get that, but the tub was filling up with water?” Steve said.
“Oh, yeah, the tub, like, it wasn’t draining,” I said, scrunching up my nose in a way that means I’m not dealing with it.
“Alright, I’ll fix it,” Steve said.

Steve grabbed some tools, went into the bathroom and closed the door. He had to close the door in order to keep the dog out—Bear likes to jump in the tub and lick the shampoo bottles (yes, we are really proud of how our dog is progressing)—but watching as he entered the bathroom with such conviction, tools in hand, ready to face the challenge, made it seem like he was embarking on a serious mission and the only thing missing was a plunger resting on his shoulder like a rifle. A few minutes later I could hear him.

“Oh my god—ugh! Sick! Ewww!” Then I heard the sound of draining water.
“Did you fix it?” I yelled from the couch. Steve walked out of the bathroom with his tools and into the kitchen.
“Uh, yeah.” He was washing his hands.
“What was the problem?”
“Well, I used an old pair of tweezers to reach down and clean out the drain and, yeah…I pulled out a bunch of hair and other shit I don’t know about.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So, it was really gross—it’s still in the trash if you want to see what I pulled out.”
“Ew, no way! Unless it was a beautiful baby unicorn or dinosaur artifacts, I’m not really interested,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘ew’? It’s your hair, your…stuff!”

After this event I began to realize that perhaps I contribute to dirtying the bathroom in a more subtle (er...ladylike?) way that I wasn’t aware of. I mean, it’s not like the glob of long, mangled blond hair that came out of our drain could have belonged to Steve. And I guess, maybe sometimes, I leave the counter (which isn’t really a counter, but rather a sink with a ledge) full of hair products and “other shit [he] doesn’t know about.” Okay, I will also admit to occasionally creating hair art on the shower walls, but only out of necessity and never out for fun. And sometimes I get a little sloppy with toothpaste, especially when I’m in a hurry (in my defense, the toothpaste usually ends up on me rather than caked on the sink).

Shortly after this drain discovery, in a moment of weakness, Steve caught me breaking my own rule of not immediately replacing the empty toilet paper roll. Yes, he caught me setting the new roll on top of the empty one, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes light up in the same way since. Now we share the duty of cleaning the bathroom, and I feel even more strongly that boys are, in fact, dirty, smelly dumbheads. As a result, I will sometimes leave a passive aggressive Post-It note on the mirror that is expertly disguised with loving wit and charm (and therefore harmless, and also surprisingly effective):

Hi honey!
The toilet is too gross to shit in.
Just FYI. K?
I love you SO much! :)
xoxoxxxxxxx
<3,
Me