To My Wife . . .

An explanation on male bathroom etiquette in response to your post yesterday.

To begin with, you are correct, men do have bathroom rules. Very strict bathroom rules. Extremely strict. In fact, I believe they go beyond rules and go into strict dictatorship. Edicts. Unspoken proclamations (which wouldn’t be a proclamation, would it?). There is some cheering, but I’ll get to that.

What are the rules? Well, first we never go to the bathroom in groups. That’s a horrible idea and, in fact, may have historically led to the fact that women talk to each other between stalls. For men, except when it comes to drunken, public urination, this is a private moment (despite the fact that seven other men are usually standing next to you). If you need to talk, it can wait until outside of the bathroom.

I’ll walk you through a general trip to the bathroom. You walk in to survey the situation. You look at the urinals. Are they filled? Is there a line? How many people are there? Would you have to stand directly next to someone? If not, feel free to use the urinal.

Grouping, or coupling, is not considered good form. It doesn’t matter how close you and the man next to you are, common courtesy is to give at least one urinal space between you and the next man. If grouping is inevitable, check out the stalls. For some people avoiding grouping is because of homophobia. I need to dispel this. As a heterosexual male, are you interested in checking out a woman’s equipment while she’s urinating? It’s the same for homosexual males. They aren’t interested in your penis while you are urinating. And, most likely, they aren’t interested in you at all. Get over it.

Here now, for the first time, I am going to explain the real reason for avoidance of grouping. Stage fright. It’s a rarely discussed problem, but some men have stage fright while trying to urinate next to other people. It’s a natural fear, really. For these men, it is recommended that they use stalls.

A few caveats. One, your hands should never be above what you’re holding. Do not place them on the walls or anywhere else. It makes us feel better to know that someone is in control of the aim. LOOK FORWARD. Do not look anywhere else. It is acceptable to look at the ceiling so long as you don’t make eye contact with someone. Some bars are nice enough to have things to read attached to the wall, in order to give you the pretense of being occupied. Do NOT make any noise. Ever. No exclamations of relief, no comments on how long you’ve waited for this, no mention of the volume or color of your urine. If, for any reason, you need to unbuckle, unbutton and unzip completely, use the stall. Let’s face it; if you’re going that far in front of a line of other people, you’re an exhibitionist. Besides, it’s common courtesy.

Now, other men like to use the stall. There is nothing wrong with this. I am one of those men. It is not a badge of shame.

In fact, there are two reasons why I generally use the stalls. One, there is usually a shorter line. Two, at my home I keep my toilet in a small room where no one else is invited while I urinate. In fact, I don’t invite my closest friends and family to urinate with me, so why should I invite perfect strangers to do so as well? I like privacy.

And, finally, though we know it happens, we do not discuss the other activity that occurs in a public restroom. Ever. Period.

Except at work. In that case, if you know the guy in the stall and he’s been in there a while, it is acceptable for you and a large group of your friends to applaud for him when he flushes.

The reasons are two-fold. One, it’s funny. Two, there is a good chance that your friend will never do that at work ever again, thereby making your use of the public restroom more pleasant.

Discuss . . . But I don’t know why you’d want to.