Dear John

When I eat at Denny's, I tend to drink an average of 3.5 Diet Cokes-- usually after midnight, mind you-- with my ever-predictable club sandwich (tomatoes picked off), and then I have to go to the bathroom 3 times. At least 3 times. It's like clockwork, and of course the longer I stay, the more often I'll have to go to the bathroom, so on and so on.

While the act of visiting the bathroom is quite an intimate matter, it's also a most universal experience. Everyone eats, everyone sleeps, everyone dies, everyone needs a bathroom once in a while. There's also a certain, universal satisfaction in going to the bathroom—it is essentially, at its most basic level, pleasurable. You go in feeling uncomfortable, and you walk out feeling much better. Win, win.

The way a bathroom is kept can reveal a lot about the person to which it belongs. Walk into someone's bathroom and it is perfectly clean—fresh towels hanging, coordinating colors, maybe even some potpourri or a scented candle next to the sink. Compare it to a bathroom covered with a layer of sticky, dusty film on the counters, clumps of hair in the shower and a bathmat strewn carelessly across the ground. Usually you'll find a ring of dirt along the waterline in the toilet. Many conclusions can be reached about the keepers of these bathrooms. I know for myself, I'd like to be friends with Clean Bathroom Keeper, or at least have them come clean mine.

Unquestionably, there are various places that are nicer to visit than others. I would go so far as to admit that I even have my personal favorites when it comes to bathroom facilities. For example, I love the bathrooms in the JFSB on BYU campus, especially the one in the south-west corner on the ground floor because no one is ever in it. I like my bathroom at my parents' house because it is mine, and I like the bathroom in my parents' bedroom because it is not mine. I don't use that one very often, so I'm sure part of the thrill is the unknown. The bathroom on the 3rd floor of the student center is fun too, partly because there's a couch in there, and I do like the one on the 2nd floor of the Provo Library since it's very quite and not ruled by screaming children, like the one on the main floor.

I think my favorite bathroom of all is in the mezzanine of the Eastman Theater at the School of Music in Rochester, New York. It's an entire suite up there, with a piano in the lounge and tables to sit at, all carpeted and lush and luxurious in shades of green and gold-gilded trim. When the theater was built in 1922, the mezzanine women's room was the place to see and be seen during intermission at the symphony or between features at the cinema. I picture groups of women sitting around the room, talking and eyeing each other curiously, while just a few steps away in the back room, toilets flushed. This didn't prevent conversations from continuing, pianos from playing, society from functioning. In 7th grade, I used to take my homework to that bathroom every Wednesday after piano lessons while I waited for Dad to finish working, studying at a table next to a window that looked down onto Gibb Street. It is a very refined place to study, that bathroom.

But as fond as I am of some bathrooms, others offend me. For example, I don't so much care for the bathroom at my apartment. There's not very much ventilation and I feel a little bit claustrophobic. Also the paint on the ceiling above the shower is peeling really badly and I find myself staring at it and it makes me feel inexplicably more and more uneasy. I stare up at that ceiling in varying shades of white and gray, with all the shadows cast by paint curls and, I don't know, maybe it'll cave in? The uncomfortable paint is even worse while I'm actually in the shower, but that's a different story altogether.

I don't like bathrooms in grocery stores. Occasionally they're kept relatively well (there's a Shop 'N' Save in Norway, Maine that comes to mind, particularly) but generally speaking, groceries and bathrooms are a little too organic. It reminds me too closely that this becomes that, and even though we're talking about something most human and the natural progress of things, I don't like dwelling on the thought.

Ironically, I tend not to mind bathrooms at restaurants that are kept nicely clean, though restaurants are not only where groceries are prepared but also consumed. Admittedly, I raise my eyebrow at patrons to carry their leftovers into the bathroom with them. I have noticed those who do so are also likely to carry on phone conversations in public bathrooms, which is an equally questionable practice.

I don't like using the bathroom at any boy's apartment only because it means I'm using the bathroom at a boy's apartment, and that is embarrassing.

Airplane bathrooms are terribly awkward. When the Fasten Seat Belt sign goes off and I get up and start walking down that aisle, everyone knows what I'm getting up to do. Then I get there and I'm stuck inside this tiny little bathroom with all its tiny compartments for soap and tissues and paper towels, and I can hardly turn around in it. And seriously, it's only one step above the Porti-Potti, with no water in the bowl and the lightweight plastic lid. On the bright side, the aero-Porti-Potti actually flushes, so airplane bathrooms are preferable to ground-based Porti-Potties.

The bathrooms on the streets of Paris are also one miniscule step above standard Porti-Potties in that they also flush (sort of) and as a bonus, they look like little martian houses. However, after you lock yourself in, you set yourself down on a bowl-- literally a bowl, with no hole in the bottom-- and when you're finished, it doesn't so much flush as it dumps the contents into a collection bin of some kind behind the main, useful part of the street toilet. You just push a button, so it's all very automated and impressive until you start to think about the thin little wall standing between you and a mountain of refuse of the most disgusting kind. And that's assuming the user of this bathroom even makes it inside, as I unfortunately discovered on my way to the Metro one morning, when I closely avoided stepping into a pile of leakage oozing directly next to the door of the pod-person bathroom. Clearly whoever said Paris is the most romantic city in the world has not used one of these Franciscan gems.

The bathrooms at the Hale Center Theater are okay except for one specific stall in the main women's room, because there is insufficient water pressure—but only in that stall. You have to hold down the flusher for a long time. I do not need my bathroom-going experience to be tainted by something so inconvenient as holding down the flusher longer than necessary. I mean, I have important places to be.

Probably my least favorite bathrooms of all are at Denny's, which is ironic given the frequency with which I visit Denny's bathrooms. At the Orem Denny's the force of the flush is so great that I feel like I'll get sucked in too. I try to use the Buddy System there, in the event that someone (namely Julie) has to break down the door and pull me out of the swirling vortex. The Provo Denny's is your stereotypical, neglected diner bathroom with water leaking everywhere and shreds of toilet paper strewn about the floor. I saw a worker in there once with a huge fan to dry the floor. It concerns me when a place has such a pluming problem as to require an enormous fan for all the water on the floor.

When it comes down to it, however, sometimes a bathroom is just a bathroom. Maybe it's got a row of a dozen stalls, maybe there's a couch to intrigue you though you know you'll probably never stay long enough to use it, and maybe it's only decorated by a set of $7.99 Martha Stewart hand towels. In the end, necessity will prevail you know, especially after an average of 3.5 Diet Cokes and a club sandwich (tomatoes picked off).