I've never been comfortable with passing a bowel movement in a public restroom. Only under the most dire of circumstances am I able to relax myself and release. These are indeed the most dire of circumstances: when I had dysentery in India I would not use public bathrooms, opting instead not to leave my room, and when faced with a squatter in a Kyoto subway stop after I had just vomited against the side of the building, insides churning with a maelstrom reaction to Suntory Boss coffee, I held it in, nearly overcome by its aggressive diuretic/laxative effect.
When I came to college, my habits reluctantly changed; dorm living forced me to extrude in public. No doubt the purgatives placed in the Towers food coaxed me on, shattering my will. They say the food is laced with the additives for the very reason of ensuring socialization.
I disliked using these public johns for myriad reasons. Those toilet seats are filthy: speckled with feces, spattered with urine, the humanity of ass sweat slow pressed into it, or encrusted with the Smirnoff retch of heedless drinkers like me.
I recall my friend Johnny, puking and then passing out with his head against that Tower toilet seat and the pink rash he immediately developed from the contact. The rash emerged that very night.
These things are unsanitary, but likely nothing an efficient, but not overly lingering wipe down and TP ass gasket can't mitigate.
My problem with using these social shitters is the public struggle. Today, I took a whizz at the library. A gentlemen had ensconced himself at a stall. I overheard his gasps for breath, his assertive grunts, the dilation and then retraction of the sphincter. His battle was on display for the world to listen to. His struggle was public and from cacaphony of his bowels, he was losing, he was floundering right in front of me.
I'm not going to reveal my failings to the populace, let alone my most private ones. I'm not going to mutter to Jesus under my breath a dozen times, curse the spiciness of curry repeatedly, and play the kazoo for the enjoyment of just anyone. I ate eat a lot of Mexican and India food.
I'm actually not willing to make the exertion in front of anyone at all. Have you ever watched a constipated dog drop one on a cold Spring's morning and the way his little hind shakes, the pleas of his eyes, the way he looks away from you, imagining he's alone? He doesn't even eat chicken tikka masala and yellow curry. That poor yellow lab has just lost his dignity, then he goes on to pretend like nothing happened at all. Liar.
This was a motivating factor for me to move off-campus and into my own apartment, into my own sound sealed toilet. I don't even like to dig in when someone else is within ear shot of my private power room, (I'll run the fuckin' water and I'm an environmentalist, okay?) let alone among a sea of god-knows-who passing in and out hearing to me lose to a deep lodged or explosively liquefied fece.
