Urination Meditation

It started this summer with an insidiously innocent bathroom remodeling. All that was happening, they told us, was an adjustment of the size of one wall and the replacement of some installations (aka-stalls). Lies! It was all lies!

I cannot legally copy and paste the words of the e-mail they sent us on October 4. Allow me to paraphrase:

"Dear Denizens of the Administration Building,

We're taking your bathroom doors and there's nothing you can do about it! Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Sincerely,

The Building Manager"

Within a week and half, the doors were gone. We arrived one morning to find merely empty doorways leading into the Women's and Men's restrooms: disturbingly empty doorways, for their emptiness had become a conduit to let loose a flood of previously private moments.

Oh, there was no fear of being seen while "getting the job done." That aforementioned wall was cleverly placed to obscure the vision of any brazen passersby. No, that furtive thing which had now been laid open to all was the sound!

It is with extreme trepidation that I venture near those bathrooms now, for all along the hallway, from one end to the other, reverberate the horrid sounds of tinkling. And flushing. And worst of all, as though one were overhearing the very emanations of hell itself, the gaseous excretions of the buttocks of the damned, the sound of farting.

But my office is mere feet from these abysses of pestilence, and to tell the truth, a bladder overflowing from the consumption of two full cups of coffee is the best antidote to the clawing fear of having one's own most private moments heard by any and all. I confess, I have used the door-less restrooms. It's best to go on Wednesdays between 11:00 and 11:10. That is the exact time when the attendees of Spanish chapel are belting out Castillian-language hymns, a tintinnabulous noise well-designed to mask the secretive sounds of urination. When I cannot hold it in until then, I hum.

It's a shameful existence I lead now, carefully checking the halls before dashing to the bathroom to ensure that no one is around to actually link my face with the sounds they subsequently hear spilling forth from the restroom.

But don't mock me. I'm not the worst. My co-workers will walk the entire length of our office building just to find a bathroom with its door yet intact. Yes, it's sad but true: we are so weak and fearful. Alas.