Toilet Talk

I remember my mother admonishing me: "Andrew, quit it with the toilet talk, or I'll get a bar of soap!" So, naturally, when I was using a toilet at O'Hare this morning, I thought, wow, why did we call it Toilet Talk? Why not "bad language"? Because, sadly, now talking about toilets is apparently social taboo. How can you say that, Andrew, you may be thinking, but, after an experience this morning, it's clear that we need a National Dialog on Toilets.

Bathrooms, and their design, absolutely fascinate me. No where is our collective neuroses of sanitation, privacy, Puritansim and sexism more evident than in your modern airport bathroom. Why the airport? Because airports are the focal point of all such transient activities -- many cultures, many sexes (I have actually seen a man in woman's dress pondering which toilet to enter, at DFW of all places), and also a prime location for bureaucrats to spend large amounts of taxpayer dollars on white elephant portals to nowhere (like Dayton, OH!). So, naturally, if there is a Hot Trend in Toilets, you'll learn about it on your average multi-segment flight.

So there I am, trying to complete my normal morning routine 642 miles and 2 hours in 12A away from my comfortable, clean, and "Andrew Certified" commode, in the latest bathroom renovation trend to spread like wildfire through airports: the auto-rotating sani-seat, with built in, self disposing seat condom, and anti-microbial plastic doors to help prevent the spread of disease. As a 6'2", 250 pound American male, a Gentleman of Luxurious Proportions, if you will, such fads usually involve some sort of posterior pain and dogfighting-esque manuvering to align my Waste Removal Ports with the Waste Intake Ports that O'Hare has so nicely provided me.

While using this toilet, which I swear had a smaller internal diameter than a 5 gallon bucket (thanks to the massive rotating-condom-dispensing toilet seat), the seat starts to shimmy. You see, in all of their brilliant wonder, the designers of said toilet device decided that after a fixed interval of time, the toilet seat would re-condom itself to ensure that none of the airborne pathogens being emitted from the clearly foriegn man in stall # 3, after eating what had to have been rotting fish flesh for dinner the night prior, would deposit themselves (and thereby sully the otherwise virginal plastic) on the seat. Now, I'm all for rotating around my anal axis, but, I don't like doing it when I've had little sleep and I'm trying to drop core in Chicago. Not to mention, when the plastic slides out, the tacky tape is still fresh and my posterior skin happens to be quite sensitive, especially to freshly exposed, organic compounded loaded super sterile plastic tape. Thankfully, I was able to complete my business before rotation was complete, but now I had a new problem -- this ingenious contraption made deployment of the Hazmat Cleaning Crew very challenging, due to a tight quarters issue. Of course, I'm extremely pleased at this point, after getting what amounts to a reverse lap dance from the toilet followed by some light bondage, and now I'm exploring the Kama Sutra, and finding the Inverse Hibiscus Cleansing position so I can clean up without breaking tender bits.

After all of these gymnastics were complete (the Russian in Stall # 2 gave me an 8 for technical presentation, but shit all over my artistic scores), I had the enviable task of cleaning my hands. The soap was an automatic dispenser, the water manual, and the paper manual. Now, to me, it should go in order of cleanliness: soap manual (because your hands are already dirty), water either way (but should be automatic), and paper clearly automatic (because my hands are clean, and I'm going to touch where everyone else has touched?) But, on some level, this logic escaped the designer and they went with The Really Cool Device That Bukkake's Your Hand With Half Emulsified Foam (I did not think, at the time, to check to see if the device was indeed manufactured by a large Japanese concern) and the I Think The 1950's Are Calling paper towel dispenser.

I think we all need to talk about our toilet experiences. If we don't, we will be relegated to these perverse studies in Industrial Design that probably are some big joke on idiot humans dumb enough to drop trou in public.