Ladies who Launch

The ladies' room at work has a couch in it. It's not the first time I've seen a couch in a women's bathroom, but I have trouble getting used to it. For some reason I just assume there are never couches in men's bathrooms, like the sofas are a sign of management's symptahy for Menstrual Hell. One of the women's bathrooms at the Center where I worked last year had, in lieu of a couch, an intimidating piece of machinery that looked an awful lot like an autoclave (specifically this one), but which turned out to be a breast pump. That was in the private bathroom, which was seldom used because the door to the stall had been removed; even though the outer door locked it was difficult to ignore the sensation that one was peeing in the hallway. There was also a normal two-stall bathroom, which was a thoroughfare of sorts. That was where I realize that American women, as a rule, don't defecate in front of each other.

For a long time I thought it was a personal neurosis. Well, a few of my female friends shared it. A high school friend claimed to have perfected the "stealth poop," a method that included prepping the toilet bowl with a layer of muffling toilet paper, in response to the personal crisis caused by co-ed bathrooms in her college dorm. While I never went to that extreme, if someone walked in on me in the act I would hold stock still until the other woman left, sometimes even elevating my shoes lest they reveal my identity--it's bad enough being the one caught pooping without people knowing I'm the one who poops. Being a reasonably sympathetic person, I always made haste to vacate the lavatory when I realized I had interrupted another woman in similar straits, and I suspected others were doing me the same service. You would think there would be a common understanding that pooping would occur in what was in fact a dedicated public pooping space. But it was really the opposite—a unspoken understanding that pooping was for dogs, babies and men.

When I began working at the Center, I was a little unnerved to encounter women who treated defecation casually. I would be, say, washing my hands, when another woman would come in, wave and smile, make conversation, and then proceed into a stall. Suddenly I would realize something was amiss. She couldn't be, could she? At first I would think she must have thought I had already left. So out of consdieration I would bang around as much as was feasible to alert her to my presence, affording her the opportunity to freeze every (every) muscle in her body, pretending that she was engaged in something perfectly harmless, like masturbation. But no, at the Center everything would continue much as I imagine it does in men's rooms until I ran out the door, hands dripping, to the refuge of my Chihuahua-filled office.

Interestingly, all of said women were visiting scholars from various East Asian countries. That's how I realized that it wasn't just me; it was a weird, unacknowledged cultural trend. I was used to other women pretending they weren't pooping. It didn't take a horrible Freudian episode, though I have one. I had gotten the notion that I was wrong for having bowel movements because I rarely encountered other women openly engaged in them. To do so would be to become a person who literally thinks her shit don't stink.

However liberating my discovery, it has not really changed my behavior or my attitudes. That's why I find it so weird that there's a couch in the dedicated public pooping space at my new job. It's a pretty nice lavatory, well ventilated and well lit--we are, after all, the Indoor Air Department. It's a very comfortable couch, hidden discreetly behind a wooden screen of the sort ladies used to change behind in movies. Next to the couch is a coffee table upon which is spread an impressive array of reading material, including a Norton Anthology of American Literature if you please. It's so popular that I've only gotten to use the couch once, after work when I took a half-hour safety nap before driving home. Every other time I've sidled by the couch with intent to lie down for a few moments (in my defense I've been having neck pain) it's been occupied, and there aren't that many women working here. It's obviously a really good thing to have and may be intimately connected to employee satisfaction. But…

You can hear other people pooping! Worse yet, other people can hear you! What if your inconveniet urges are interfering with someone else's meditation? What if your inconvenient neck pain is interfering with someone else's afternoon crap? From limited observation, however, I have to admit that the female workforce of Building 90 doesn't seem all that bothered. Some of the reading material has even made its way into the stalls, where people will hang out reading Parenting or Ebony for ten minutes at a time. It's almost like we've been brainwashed into thinking it's something normal.