Silence is paramount. I quietly push open the bright orange door, the gateway to my liberation. Left, my head turns, then right. All clear. This is what I had been praying for. I walk briskly past the urinals, excitedly about to stake my claim on my pick of the toilets.
As silent and as solid as a statue stands a pair of shoes under the middle of three stalls. Someone else is here. Mission failure. Now begins the awkward descent into the handicapped-accessible stall, the Taj Mahal of toilet stalls. There are a few drops of yellow on the toilet seat. White porcelain hides nothing. Slowly and silently I dispense a few squares of toilet paper, carefully placing them over the toilet seat. The drops disappear under the strips of white. All the while I am wary of the mysterious agent in the stall next to mine. Who is he? Why is he not moving? Surely he has been sitting there for several minutes. He should be collecting toilet paper, cleaning himself. Is he constipated? I wait a few moments to see if he will move. He doesn't. So I sit there too, motionless, hoping for someone else to walk into the washroom to break the silence and guise the sound of my "evacuation" with the sounds of footsteps or running tap water.
My toilet stall holds chronicles of those who have preceded my sitting, like the commissioned artworks and scriptures of past kings, attesting their existence and rule over their throne. This stall particularly has preserved a rich history of illustrations and phrases that mark the spaces on my left, to my right, and on the stall door in front of me. The preoccupations of the human mind uncensored lie here - images of phallic symbols, politics, sex, and the miseries of life remain reported on these walls. They are comment cards on the everyday affairs of the average people. They entertain me for some moments.
I have been waiting several minutes, yet neither my neighbour nor any stranger has made a sound. Ridiculous, I think to myself. So I begin. It leaves me slowly, smoothly, but I brace for the inevitable. The surface of the water shatters from the contact it makes with my evacuation. I cringe as it is almost deafening amidst the silence. With my vulnerability now exposed through the obviousness of my presence, I take shame in collecting the tissue paper to clean myself as quickly as possible to make my escape.
The door opens. Voices fill the washroom, so I stop as suddenly as I began. My stall is impossibly close to those voices. Might they recognize my shoes? I draw my feet in towards me. The strangers turn on the tap. Fantastic! This is my opportunity, and I seize it, cleaning myself with the speed of lightning.
Finally I'm finished. But I cannot leave the stall just yet. There remains one last task. A turn of the handle will signal with thunderous warning my activities. I could wait for them to leave. By now I have established a strange sort of comfort with my porcelain friend. I could conceivably sit here forever in shame, waiting for the washroom to flush out its invaders, save me, at its will. How could I bare to face the invaders, me, an obvious perpetrator charged with the crime of committing a "number two"? Unfortunately, the strangers seem to be taking their time. Amazingly, the person in the stall next to mine hasn't moved since I arrived. I wonder for a moment whether he's even alive.
With my eyes on the ground and my head down, I take a deep breath and flush. I promptly flee my stall, only briefly rinsing my hands before darting out the door. My liberation, at last.
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