By Stephanie Herbert
The Dartmouth Staff
As columnist emeritus, I have spent the last two terms sequestered in my room, compulsively reading The D online and breaking my vow of silence only to sing Gregorian chants and, on particularly wild nights of solitude, babble in tongues while rocking back and forth, clutching my beloved stuffed hippo. However, as my commitment to serious journalism is unfailing, I feel that I must break my silence to tackle the Really Big Issues. That's right, you guessed it: the John.
In a world where separations between men and women are becoming more and more outdated, bathroom segregation goes largely unchallenged (yes, I know some wild places have unisex bathrooms, but its not the norm, and anyway they should really be called pansex [doesn't that sound fun?] as the prefix "uni" is frighteningly illogical in this case). At this point in my life, I'm worldly and cultured enough to have set foot in both the Dames and Gents rooms, and I'd say I've learned a few things.
I wouldn't say that I am exactly fascinated by the men's room. But the men's room and I have had a funny little relationship right from the get-go. I vividly remember being about three or four years old and in some office building with Daddy and Big Brother Herbert. We all had to pee, but the women's room was inexplicably locked. So we three made our way into the men's room, where I proceeded to go about my usual Stephanie the pre-schooler bathroom routine.
As I was washing my hands, Daddy and Big Brother Herbert looked at me in sheer horror. "Stephanie, what are you doing?!" they yelled as they dragged me to another sink and then out of the bathroom, entirely disgusted. This incident perplexed me, but it wasn't until I was about 10 and watching some scene on TV unfolding in a men's room that it dawned on me: "Oooooooh, now I get it: I washed my hands in a urinal." When you think about it, it's not that weird; the urinal was probably closer to the ground than the sink (ah, the days when mini-Hephie appreciated the short water fountain). But still. Gross.
Since then, I live in constant fear of mistakenly wandering into the men's bathroom. I'll be in a stall on third-floor Berry and suddenly think, "Oh my god, did I black out? Am I in the men's room?" As I peek out of my stall door with quick, bird-like glances (kind of like a flamingo on speed), I breathe a sigh of relief to see ye olde tampon/sanitary napkin dispenser, like a beacon flashing, "You belong here."
This overwhelming paranoia made me wonder what it would really feel like to wander into a men's room. What's the big deal, after all? It's only plumbing (double entendre! ha ha uh ...). And then I found out. At my formal this fall, I desperately needed to pee, but both women's stalls at White River Junction's renowned Coolidge Hotel were occupied by girls who were having trouble holding down their dinners. Desperate, I raced into the men's bathroom. Here is what I learned: When girls come into the boys' bathroom, boys standing at the urinals start yelling.
For reasons passed understanding, it really seemed like they didn't want me there. Fortunately, wild, megalomaniacal proclamations such as "Calm down, it's my formal, I do what I want," can temporarily quiet the clamoring, unzipped masses. Another lesson: just because a stall door is ajar does not mean it is unoccupied, which I learned as I barged in on an extremely distressed-looking young man using the only stall in Coolidge's men's room. Finally, the most important advice I garnered from my foray into the men's room would be "look before you leap": triumphant at finally getting the stall, I plopped down with relief only to shrilly scream, "Ahhh, the seat was up!" much to the delight of the aforementioned boys at the urinals. Also, just FYI ladies, La Coolidge is not apparently a fan of gender confusion vis--vis the bathroom. The Coolidge enforcer was hunting "the girl in the green dress who used the men's room" for the rest of the night in order to throw her out. Shhhhhhhhh.
Despite this scarring experience, I still find the whole separation of "Men" and "Women" a little tricky. What do you do if you're a very convincing transvestite? Or, like Ricky Vasquez on "My So-Called Life," merely more comfortable in the girl's bathroom? What is more important, others' comfort or your own? Personally, I'd rather have Ricky in the bathroom with me than the girls who teeter one foot above the seat in order to avoid germs and, in doing so, pee all over the goddamn seat and don't have the courtesy to clean it up (yes, you irritating girls who use the first-floor Berry bathroom, I am absolutely talking to you).
Guys, did you know that girls line toilet's seats with toilet paper and then just leave it on the seat for some other poor oaf to remove? Honestly, anyone who has ever spent a significant amount of time in a ladies room can tell you that the fairer sex is anything but. Likewise, I feel sure that there are some fastidious young gentlemen who would prefer not to share a bathroom with members of their sex to whom the term "housebroken" is entirely foreign.
In this age of ever-blurring gender lines, I propose a new and revolutionary way to separate our full-bladdered kind: people who can keep their urine to themselves, and people who can't.
Those of us who believe that our pee should be deposited solely in the toilet bowl will convene in one room, and you seat/wall/floor pissers can soak up each other's lack of hygiene in another (I realize that this arrangement will leave me sharing a bathroom with the kind of guys who sit down to pee, but hey, it's not like we have to socialize). A third option, a smelly hole in the ground that will generously be called a "latrine," we will reserve for that extremely irritating set of people who choose to refer to the restroom as "the little boys' room" or "the little girls' room." As punishment for being so overwhelmingly creepy and gross (the little boys' room? Is that really the big draw of the bathroom for you, you sick fck?), you can go pss in a smelly ditch.
Or the AD basement.
