Don't Eat Dinner In The Ladies' Loo

So I had that dream again. The one where I'm in an endless public restroom.


A bit of back story: I will give myself a bladder infection if it means avoiding a public restroom. I will squat in a parking lot before I use a public restroom. I have been in public restrooms all over the world and I hate them all. I have a reaction similar to a panic attack if someone is in the stall next to me. If I have to use one - or, as is most often the case, one of my children has to - I spend the next few hours convinced that at best we've contracted a dreadful stomach virus. At worst... only Dr. House knows. My happy-go-lucky, lasseiz faire, live and let live attitude stops at the threshold of the public potty door. As soon as I set foot into one of  those echo chambers of filth and all manner of unmentionable-ness, I become fierce, territorial, paranoid and elitist. I don't want to hear your shuffling feet, your zipping fly, your sighs of relief or your rolling toilet paper. I will jump out of my skin if - for the love of all that's holy! - I hear your bodily function noises in any form. And you absolutely may not, under any circumstances whatsoever, poop near me.


I have a recurring dream where I am stuck in an endless public restroom. It only seems fitting, somehow.

This was one of the posh ones - with soft lighting and marble counters and an attendant. (Small digression here: Have you ever read David Foster Wallace's piece about a restroom attendant? It's in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. It is both brilliant and terrifying.) So I'm sitting in this posh, public restroom (lipstick on a pig, my friends, lipstick on a pig!) eating dinner. You know how some restaurants have that special table in the kitchen that you have to reserve months and months in advance? Well this was like that, except that it is in the ladies' room. I'm dining with a friend. The friend is no one I really know. I only know that she is female and that she is a close friend. I can't pin her down any more than that. We are enjoying steaks and convivial conversation, feeling a little bit naughty and decadent, like you do when you go out for a nice dinner while the husband feeds the kids hot dogs and mac and cheese at home. I am having a good time and feeling special that we got this primo table when the lighting shifts just a little bit. Barely perceptible, but enough to make things feel a wee bit ominous. A well dressed man comes rushing into the ladies' room and flings himself into a stall where he then proceeds to become violently ill. Violently and loudly. Excessively.

I jump up, horrified, completely uninterested in my steak, and I run. The door through which the man has come is gone and there is only the endless stretch of restroom which has morphed into a sort of subway station atmosphere - echoing tile, greenish flickering fluorescent lighting, grime and litter - completely lined with stalls. Most of the stalls are occupied with people in the midst of horrible, private activities. I run and I run and I run, haunted and chased by the man's voluble and voluminous retching. I feel no sympathy for the man, only disgust and anger. My friend is chasing me, trying to explain that it's OK, I should settle down, we'll work it out, just ignore it. I am deciding that she is crazy because there's no way to ignore it and anyway, it was her stupid idea to go out to eat and shut up and help me find the maître d'.

This is the point in the dream where I am so sound asleep, so entrenched in this complete nonsense that I am positive that I will reside in this horrible bathroom forever, wandering until I am either starved or die of typhoid, forced to witness the horrors of human waste in all of its forms for eternity. This is where I start to cry in exhaustion and desperation. It is always at this point in these dreams - the point where I give up and give in to despair - that I find whatever it is I'm looking for. In this case, the maître d'.

I am breathless, choked with indignation, I can barely speak I am so angry. "That man! That man in the ladies' room!" It seems the pinnacle of injustice to me that he is in the wrong restroom. "That man is throwing up so loudly it has ruined my dinner!" I am screaming at the calm maître d' in a way that I have rarely screamed at anyone in my waking life. "And he's in the ladies' room! Fix it! This is unacceptable!" 

In the process of all of this screaming, the background fades back to that of a really nice restaurant where nice people are calmly eating their nice dinners. There is no man horking up his internal organs; only me, creating a spectacle and screaming at the top of my lungs. The maître d' appraises me calmly and says "Why were you eating in the ladies' room?" and I am completely devastated. I sputter and stammer and try to explain and there is no explanation. I am overwhelmed by the complete unfairness of it all and anger at myself and at the barfing man and the smug people eating their dinner so calmly in the dining room and the maître d' with his critical eye and silly coat and suddenly I'm full of doubt and I wake up.


That's it. I'm just gonna leave this with you. Draw your own conclusions.
Here's mine: you can't blame a guy for barfing near you if you're going to dine in a public restroom. Or something like that.