A STORY ABOUT ALL GENDER TOILETS
By John Caffrey, retired English teacher.
The usher smiles and thanks us and she looks kind, genuine, so I smile back and wink. Row F affords my wife and I a handy getaway and barely more than a grunt is enough in fluent bladder speak for those deep into middle age to know it’s time to make for the toilet. We try to peel apart, but don’t get very far when our brains jar upon reading the sign on the only door.
All gender toilet.
That’s fine, so I power through after the initial surprise. This strange portal, tucked into the grey walled bowels of the theatre/cinema complex corridor plays host to squirming, culture hungry, curious people who are all confused, caught off guard by what’s inside. The façade of what was supposed to be a simple ‘quick leak and see you in the lobby’ is yanked back so callously that none of the participants, with spinning heads know they are now thrust, without warning into a high stakes game of etiquette poker. The uplifting experience I had five minutes ago, watching the astounding performers pull apart themes of depression, purpose and existence itself is already flushed away, replaced by something more uncompromising. But I get ahead of myself.
I’m John Caffrey, a 62-year old former English teacher who retired early to write full-time and enjoy the abundance of culture on offer in the city whilst I’m still young enough to grab it with both hands. The last time I had to expose myself in front of three women, I was four years old.
Inclusion and diversification are buzz words today, thrown around in PR and marketing companies scrambling to be the good guys, but I believe these have long since been the pillars of literature, embedded within the art for centuries. To spend time with those who are different from oneself is the lifeblood of the writer, something I spent my career trying to drum into cackling adolescent hyenas in grey trousers and ties, not yet ready to understand. That’s because you have to give new things a chance to acclimatise before they will be truly accepted.
My wife, Julia gasps, “Oh absolutely not!” as she wheels away and staggers into the corridor when she sees what’s behind the all-gender toilet door. For me, it’s too late and I’m one desert boot and turned up jeans leg in, with two people breathing down my neck. They all got the same idea after curtain call and one by one, eyes widen, panic setting in. A row of four urinals screams up at four men who look slightly tense. Intermittent bursts of urine hit the porcelain with an evident lack of zest and I feel very 1972 for recognizing what is inescapable, yet unsaid in here. There is no elephant in the room, but a thirty-something, attractive woman with red sleeves rolled up, in knee high boots and hair cut in a sharp black bob. She leans back, casually against the wall, waiting for the one cubicle. One cubicle. She is the dog in the playground. Total chaos has broken out on a meta level and it rains down like snowflakes, cold and silent, sending little shivers and shocks up the backs of our necks, creating gridlock.
This is not the Fox and Grapes, so nobody says a thing, but there are no smiles or eye contact either. It is not prejudice, sexism, luddite tendencies or anything else so unwieldy that we feel, but black-hole discomfort. We’re all good kids who stepped out of line and now have to stare down mother and the teacher at the same time. I have precious little time to adapt in the queue, but it is enough to think about why my wife of 30 years just ran off into the café area to find the disabled toilet. She, as much as or perhaps more than I, is ready for change; eager to suck downshackles like spaghetti; well equipped to deal with mightier plops in the next cubicle. She’s up for sturdier smells and hairier conversations at the sink as we all wash our hands, apologise for taking too long at the hand dryer and make our exits. But what she wasn’t ready for was a pick ‘n’ mix of penises displayed as readily as the selection of local ales at the venue bar. Not that close, not that sudden, none of us need this. The man in front of me, bald, built, wearing a smart navy blazer and brown trousers zips up without a sound. His jagged, wardrobe rail shoulders remain fixed; there is none of the brash shaking, tiptoe balancing, grunting, amplified angular movements of one exhibiting his confidence in the company of other male genitalia routinely seen at public urinals. He passes me with his head down, rinses one hand barely long enough to catch the mist from the hot water and gets out with his fingers still dripping onto the corridor floor.
Whoever is in the cubicle which the woman waits for is silent as I sidle up to the wall, irrationally nervous, pawing at my crotch, missing my fly three times before I pull one button so hard the fabric tears a little. Get a grip, John boy! You’ve dealt with worse than this! Remember when Saleem Razaq and Andrew Garnett pushed you against the blackboard and tried to throttle you?! Remember reading Joyce for the first time?
Is she uncomfortable? She has to be! The door opens and I see two young women scowl and wave away this oil on water opportunity. Where is the row of cubicles? That’s all we need here and it will be business as usual. Oh Christ. I can’t go. Staring up at the roof I feel dizzy. I mean, I’ll help them carry the societal barriers out myself. Rip down all the walls! I’ve got a pair of hands and a disdain for prejudice. I’d expect no less of a place routinely supporting art dealing with sensitive and vitally important issues. I want that! But what about the cubicles? Oh God, two more women enter and seem OK with this, happy to form a queue. They’re loud, drunk. My thatch of hair is starting to frizz and expand because I’m burning up. Can they see it from there? They’re spluttering laughing at something. I haven’t worried about size since my teenage years and yet… What about three bathrooms? It’s a big venue. Male, female, anyone. Multiple choice. UP TO YOU. A grizzly and malevolent horror pierces the film of my microwave mind, a surge of wind in my lower abdomen. The giant fart held back, allowed to reach adulthood throughout the performance has come back strong. I try to distract myself, imagining mirrored scenarios where I step into a cubicle where a lady is sat on the toilet, tights around her ankles and I have to take my own seat there too. No, bullshit, John! Not the same. Is it? Oh I don't know!
I chance a look over my shoulder.
“I’m fucking desperate. Hurry up in there!”
She shouts. The original lady is still just there, gazing around the room. Check your Facebook, do something! I feel like turning and urinating over the cubicle wall like the pupils at my school used to do in the 1980s, onto whoever has surely died in there, causing this tailback in contemporary hell.
A dribble. I stop as soon as it starts. If I piss, I break wind and then it’s all over. I even melt into a puddle of embarrassment if I fart in front of my wife. I can’t help it. I mean, it happens, but she howls laughing at how much it kills me. I have to leave the room to do that. But I can’t leave here, can I? Not with it out and in my hand, committed to an action, checking the safety has not been left on. Eventually, with entire civilisations rising and falling in between, I leak, a slow, pathetic series of droplets, enough to hold back the other thing. The man on my right leaves and suddenly, the desperate lady says,
“Oh I can’t wait any more.”
She stomps across, next to me, earning a tut from the person at the front of the queue.
“Sorry love, don't look.”
Speaking to me, at me, here, like this, her red wine breath may as well be Tolkien dragon fire. Stunned and rooted to the spot in terror, I defy her order and take it all in, wide-eyed as she bunches her dress up in two tulips on her hips, one in each fist, points her backside at the urinal and goes.
“What! Stop staring! Anna, seen this perv? Only kidding love, you’ve seen worse, haven’t ya?”
I close my eyes tight and stare ahead, hyper aware of everything in space and time as her friend says,
“Disgrace, you are, leave him alone.”
To my left, the squeak and rumble of toilet paper being pulled from the roll is the last thing I hear as an exuberant, loud, short and suitably dramatic Tom Cruise of a fart rasps out into the room. If it had teeth, they’d be bright white, stacked in a seamless grin. My eyes open wide and I lose my composure, miss the urinal and splash the floor as the damn breaks. A couple of drops stains my shoes.
“Aww! Dirty bastard! Fuckin’ stinks that does.”
She says, standing, dropping her dress.
“Sorry lads, I had to piss. Brave new world innit!”
This triggers an eruption of laughter from her friend. The original lady by the cubicle sighs. Overhead, an announcement crackles out of a speaker, something about the 9.30pm showing and I grunt, drop my shoulder and skitter across to the sink, tucking myself in without slowing. Glancing in the mirror, I look terrible, ill, almost. Christian Bale in The Machinist gaunt. Before I leave, I take one last look back into the all gender toilet and nobody pays me a blind bit of attention, not even the savage who fishes for something in her small red handbag at the sink.
Outside, the car door opens and Julia is messaging on her phone, which is connected via a white charger lead to cigarette lighter port. Radio 2 is on; Jamie Cullum’s jazz show. Not even Miles Davis can trumpet away these horrors. I stare in at her. Eventually she tosses the handset down and looks up to see what I’m doing, standing out here, under the streetlight.
“You took your time,”
she says. I clumsily get into the vehicle and turn off Cullum, feeling the cooling patch of sweat on my armpits and lower back.
“I thought you liked this show?”
She says as she turns on the headlights, lighting up a crisp packet on the pavement. As the schlick-schlock of the indicator starts, Julia flashes to let a BMW pass and I think about how to word what I want to say.