Public Restrooms and the Sacrosanct

The public bathroom is one of the most maligned institutions, and not without good reason. It gives a whole new meaning to avoiding something "like the plague", providing an atmosphere so degraded that it seems possible that one might contract such a disease, or worse. Perhaps this is why so many of those paper covers, "for your protection", can be found in bathrooms around the United States these days, keeping your asshole safe for democracy.

In fact, I find myself more and more covering the seat with those odd wax paper constructions, and in their absence, resorting to strange abstract configurations of toilet paper which would belong better to an early 20th century avant-garde movement than comforting for my posterior. The need to gentrify myself, to escape the muck and grim of everyday life extends beyond the bathroom. Whenever I'm forced to cross over the freeway when running I crank my iPod up a little louder. Those little white earbuds have become my personal walls, a development that Bradbury would probably acknowledge with a cool disapproval typically reserved for when you find a condom in your son's dresser. I want to believe in the morals of a vivacious experiential lifestyle, the good of living in synergy with my surroundings, but some of the realities are simply too real.

And so enters the role of the public bathroom. Possibly it is because I am a runner that I have gained reverence for this uncommon target of veneration. Certainly, the discovery of a bathroom on a long run for a soul in need rivals any conversion experience I've ever heard about. But the appeal extends beyond the physiological. An empty public restroom is a modern cathedral, a cloister for the soul. Typically dark, the exception to this rule is the light which slants down through the high, bunker slits that function as windows. This contrast plays well upon the tiles and other simple ceramics which adorn the floor, postmodern mosaics which fascinate through a logic thoroughly devoid of thought or intelligence.

I won't go as far to say that the shit on the wall enhances the religious aspect. Public restrooms deserve their reputation for a filth. However, it is a potent reminder of reality. Indeed, the powerful musk practically clubs the senses with into acknowledging reality (clubbing seals, however, does not). But it is this sense of earthly reality, combined with the simple aesthetic pleasures of the building itself, which lead to the religious appeal to the modern public restroom.