Over the weekend I had to borrow a dollar from a friend in order to pee.
I have expressed before my distain for bathroom attendants, or bathroom matrons as they are also called. I can understand them, perhaps, in a nice restaurant where the bathroom is crisp and clean and the attendant gives the place an air of class. However, an anonymous, dirty downtown shitter is really an annoying place for an attendant.
I do not recall exactly where it was. I met up at my friend's apartment and he offered his hospitality of a few rum and cokes in which I diligently indulged. Once a few other people he was waiting for showed up I was buzzing merrily and simply followed them to whatever the destination was. It was some bar and the backdoor opened up to an 'outside' area which was actually a large ceiling room that vaguely reminded me of a bus station. On the other end of the hall was the back door to several other clubs. It was a nice place to sit and drink as I did not have people bumping into me or brushing past me every few seconds.
So, after a couple of drinks, nature called to me as it always does. I asked where the bathroom was and I was directed down the cavernous hall to a small dingy door in a side hall. I walked in and there I beheld a bathroom attendant. I sighed. What was odd about him was the bathroom was a real shithole. Dirty scuffed up tile, graffiti, peeling chunks of wall, the dull stench of piss. Basically everything you expect from a downtown bathroom. You go in, whiz out your overpriced drinks and you are on your merry way. For whatever reason this one had a bathroom attendant.
He had spread out on the sink a variety of toiletries. After-shaves and cheap colognes and the like. When you finish you business and head out the door he darts in front of you with a little container of soap. Now, I am the kind of person who likes to wash my hands after I use a dingy public restroom, so there is no avoiding it. Thus soap gets squirted into my hand, I wash them, he hands me a towel. Nothing he just did actually made my bathroom trip any easier. However, after that little performance I just can't walk away form the dude without tipping him. I mean, this guy stands in the shitter all night, watches a steady parade of drunks defecate and urinate, often times where they are supposed to. I am somehow guilted into giving him a dollar.
I noticed in his little tip basket there was a ten-dollar bill, as if that was his suggested tip amount. Nice try pal. There is not even a woman in view that can observe me playing off as being a big tipper. So I opened my wallet and in there was a single crumpled dollar bill. I dropped it in his basket. There, guilt relieved.
However, sure enough an hour or two and several rum and cokes later I had to pee again. However, since I was paying for my drinks with a card I was now cashless. I asked My friend Shallan for a dollar, but all she had was a five. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I asked the bathroom guy for change, he would protest that he has none, all the while greedily eyeballing my fiver. So I had to hit my friend TJ up for a dollar, which he graciously gave me but I still felt foolish. I needed a dollar to go pee.
I wonder if a bum could set himself up as a bathroom attendant. Just find some public restroom, spread out some toiletries, hold out a bottle of liquid soap and get people to tip him as they pee. He could probably make a good profit. However, then again, if he was willing to have such a work ethic he would probably not be a bum in the first place.
That same night I also experienced the most curious sensation of someone getting my attention by grabbing my elbow flab. I have never in my life had someone do this to me and I was mildly shocked. Amanda, my friend TJ's wife, was making some point to me. I forget what. Either she was telling me something or calling me an ass for some drunken antics I might have preformed. I forget which. At any case when my attention wandered away she snaked out and grabbed my elbow flab and yanked me back over. She did this as carelessly and as experienced as some nursemaid grabbing a five year old by his ear. When I professed my shock she laughed and yanked on it harder. I shot a questionable look to TJ but he just shrugged and reached out and grabbed Shallan's elbow-flab in either an act of solidarity or as proof that elbow flab grabbing was not all that uncommon. Either way that was a new one to me.
After a while I felt bacon and pancakes calling me. Mmm. Pancakes.
Someone on my friends list said they saw me walking back to my car that night. I am easy to spot out in a crowd I suppose.
Spent the rest of the weekend puttering around my house. I unloaded most of the rocks form my truck. Used some as ground covering and put the rest in a pile until I can figure out what I am going to do with it. Also, today Sanford is performing a 'smoke test' on the city sewer. I assume they are going to pump smoke through it and when they see it billowing out of a crack in the street or something, they found a break that needs to be fixed. However, since I am renovating my bathroom my sewer pipe where the toilet goes is exposed. So this morning I put a bowl over the top of it so that my house would not fill up with sewer pipe smoke. At least, I hope it will stop it.
2026 Update
Time machine to 2006: Ed's short on cash, long on rum, and dodging both a bathroom shakedown and an elbow-flab kidnapping.
Twenty years on, this reads like a dispatch from a vanished planet. In 2006 a rum-and-coke-fueled night out required actual cash—crumpled dollar bills borrowed from friends, fivers eyed like treasure—and a bathroom attendant could still guilt a man into tipping for the privilege of washing his hands in a dirty sink. Now I carry a brick that buzzes, my money is a captured herd of phantom numbers, and the closest thing to an attendant is a tablet asking if I want to tip 30 percent before I've even received my coffee. That MySpace image link? Dead as the bar's 'outside' ceiling room. The smoke test on the sewer, with Ed covering his exposed toilet pipe with a bowl, has the same energy as unplugging the router to fix the Wi-Fi: a sort of hopeful, zero-information ritual. Even the elbow-flab grab—casual, physical, performed without a smartphone in hand—feels like an artifact from a more tactile age. And yet the eternal truth remains: if you give a drunk man a five and demand change, he will suspect the bathroom attendant of hoarding ones.
“2006 Ed, after Amanda grabbed your elbow flab and TJ yanked Shallan's in solidarity, did you ever work out what point she was trying to make, or did the rum and cokes delete that whole conversation from history?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Ahh, Beelzebubba, you're asking about the elbow flab incident like it's some great mystery. Truth is, I never did work out what Amanda was saying. The rum and cokes apparently deleted that entire conversation from history, and I've got no clue if she was scolding me for some drunken nonsense or just informing me that the moon was made of cheese. I didn't have the guts to ask her about it later, mainly because I figured she'd grab my elbow flab again and yank me around like a misbehaving puppy. And TJ, bless him, wasn't any help. He just does whatever Amanda does, probably out of self-preservation. So the point is lost forever, if there even was a point. Honestly, I think she just likes messing with people. That whole night was a blur of cheap rum, bad bar lighting, and a dollar I had to borrow just to pee. Take that, elbow flab.
