Random Bathroom Rant
Someone here at work asked me if I'd ever been in a ladies' restroom before, and the answer is yes, I have...but it managed to bring out this really horrible set of memories that my therapist says I have to vocalize in order to get over them and move on.

When I was in high school, I was in the band. Yes, I was a band geek, and as junior, I didn't even march - I played in the orchestra pit. At football games. Anyway, our Pit captain was this girl named Janelle, and even though she was blind, I had the whole younger-guy-woman-in-a-powerful-position hots for her, so I'd go to her church every so often. She invited me, so it wasn't stalking. Just sad.

Anyway, There were about four mens rooms, and every one of them was identical: theoretically sterile tile with green-black grout that used to be white, floor-length urinals (side note: every guy not two feet tall hates those things), one stall with no door, and a sink with no soap, no towels, and one working faucet. Invariably, it was the cold water, so when you rinse your hands off after doing whatever, you get a) diseased and b) the finger-shivers. Awful.

The ladies' rooms, on the other hand - wait, I'm sorry. Salons. They called them salons. Like it's a place where you go to have your nails and hair done at the same time as whatever else goes on in a bathroom. And of course it had its own foyer. Not an entry, not a rat-maze three-turn hallway so you can't see in or out, but a legitimate foyer. With carpet. And a leather sofa. And flowers. Freaking flowers in a john. That's like putting mice in a cat sanctuary. "Oh, they look so nice!" THEY'RE GOING TO DIE. THE ENVIRONMENT IS HOSTILE. And, of course, it's David in the lions' den; the flowers live and actually encourage the normally foul bathroom odors to change their ways, commit to God, and smell like a berry patch.

The mens' locker room at Washington University was pretty bad too. For two solid years, the soap dispensers that would normally be mounted next to the sinks sat on the floor, sad and lonely and impotent. And soapless, which is perhaps the bigger key. It's not just the hepatitis-positive door handle anymore, now it's the weight equipment, and any diseases being spread around would not only be guy-centered (we're tough, we can take a little stomach virus), it crosses gender barriers to girls, because a lot of guys, like me, don't just bench 500 pounds - we like to start light, like with the three-pound weights. Partly because that's girl central at that end of the weight rack, but partly also because - well, I was scrawny as a freshman. And sophomore. And junior...

Just so we're clear, guys actually like nice bathrooms. They don't have to be froofy and pink, but we tend to be in there a little longer than girls. Is it so hard to pay some low-wager a few bucks to come in and mop the floor every five years or so? Or empty the trash? Or just bring in some soap? Please? I can dry my hands on my pants, I can take that, but I don't want to have to worry that I'm going to come right out of the loo and have my boss say, "Brian, I want to shake your hand." Because that'd just be too tempting...