I hate public restrooms.
I mean I’m physically OK with most of the locations that I have entered; and needless to say, public restrooms are far too necessary in certain times of our natural yet undesirable compulsion to excrete. However, as far as the strenuous immersion of individuality into the fabric of society goes, the concept of public restrooms is a shitty conundrum.
Again, I mean the whole idea of a restroom is for humans to feel convenient within a self-contained leeway (i.e the much-cherished freedom, at the most intimate level there is--to piss, take a crap, shave, masturbate, and most crucially, sing--without any wariness). (Yes, to sing is to enjoy one’s privilege at its finest.)
Yet when it goes public, whoop-dee-doo, the restroom gets bigger and cleaner, and filled with total strangers. Can you understand how weird it feels to exercise the most basic human needs in a fancier, larger, yet more claustrophobic version of our beloved comfort zone? It’s a scary hybrid--a bastard child of isolation and conformity. To use a public restroom is to painstakingly walk the fine line between comfort and politeness, showing us how hard it is to compromise.
The bottom line is: Am I entitled, or at least occasionally allowed, to fart in a public restroom? If I am, how loudly should it go? And could I get an extra grunt of satisfaction, “Urgh, whoo-hoo!”?
Edited from my original piece (from Facebook and Medium accounts)