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Assume the
Position
I'm going there... so if
you don't want to, you should just stop now.
7-20
- I was in the men's
room at work today, evacuating the remnants of my fourth
cup of coffee when the door to the restroom opened, and
an older gentleman came in and lined himself up in front
of the urinal next to me.
-
- Men's room
etiquette is a strange thing. First off, we have urinals.
The simple fact that we have to stand there next to each
other while we're doing our business means that there has
to be some sort of acknowledgement between you and the
other person. It's basically just common courtesy, but
it's not like you can shake hands or anything…
-
- Mostly guys nod at
each other in bathrooms, unless they know each other. If
two men know each other in a restroom, chances are they
will make some sort of conversation based off one or more
of the following phrases.
-
- "How's it
going?"
"Long time no see!"
"Whatcha know?"
"Same 'old, Same 'old"
"Have a good one!"
"I heard that!"
-
- The weird thing
is, you tend to talk as loudly as possible to each other,
maximizing the natural echo and reverb that most
bathrooms posses. I'm not really sure why, but it's just
the way it works. I suppose that it's possible that all
the volume might be for the benefit of the guys that are
in the stalls sitting down.
-
- See, you never
know when you're going to sit down in a bathroom stall
and have one of those
sessions; one of those where you pray you're the only one
in there, pray that you're the only one that you have to
look at when you come out the door. Perhaps out of a
sense of empathy for the other guys who might end up in
the same sort of predicament you do everything you can to
make sure that your small talk is loud enough to cover up
the sounds of anything else that might be happening at
the time.
-
- The man who came
in next to me nodded quickly. I returned the gesture.
-
- I was a bit taken
back by the fact that although there were several urinals
available -- he decided to park himself at the one right
next to me. This is not the way it usually goes. In an
empty bathroom situation, most guys will allow for at
least a one-toilet buffer between themselves, if not
more. It's not a time to be close up; you know what I
mean?
-
- I had never seen
this particular guy before in the office. I didn't know
him.
-
- But it didn't take
very long for me to figure out who he
was…
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- A wall
grabber
-
- As men, you hear
odd stories about women in bathrooms. Preposterous and
outlandish tales that don't seem to have any sort of
basis in reality. You hear about women "hovering" over
the bowl, you hear about ladies that put their legs up
against the stall so that no one can see their feet under
the door, you hear about groups of women "teaming up" to
somehow help each other through the task at hand…
-
- You hear these
things, but you dismiss them…. I mean, really --
hovering?
-
- But then you see a
wall grabber and you realize that in a public restroom,
just about anything could be possible.
-
- We all learned how
to use bathroom fixtures at a young age, but the strange
part is that we were all instructed to some extent on how
to do so by our parents. The closer it gets to the time
when I'm going to have to teach my son in the finer
points of standing and peeing at the same time, the more
that I start to wonder about my training in this regard.
Be straight about something, there is no
manual.
-
- Men learning to
pee is about tradition. It's a skill that's handed down
from father to son, father to son, and father to son. You
don't question the methods; you just follow by
example.
-
- If your dad is a
wall grabber, then you're gonna be one too, and there's
nothing you can do about it...
-
- For those of you
who don't know, a 'wall grabber' is a man who leans
against the bathroom wall for support while taking a
whiz. Being that I don't belong to this particular tribe,
I find the whole concept bizarre and frightening. What's
worse, wall grabbing is not a technique… it's a
procedure.
-
- First, the wall
grabber approaches the urinal and squares himself up in
front of it. Then, still standing a step or so back from
the apparatus, he unzips and prepares everything that he
needs to prepare. This in itself is a little unnerving,
especially if you are in an adjoining space because you
get the suspicion that he might start to relieve himself
from all the way back there. I actually saw a man do this
at a highway rest stop once -- shooting for the target
from a long distance away -- and it scared the hell out
of me. Me and everyone else in the bathroom at the time
did our best to belly up as close to our own respective
toilet as possible, lest we be hit with a stray
splash.
-
- I mean, come on --
it's not a game, no one's keeping score or judging on
artistic merit… just piss and get out
already!
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- Thankfully, the
man in the bathroom with me didn't do
this.
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- The next thing
wall grabbers do after they get everything out in the
open and ready to go is they throw their free hand
straight up in the air, sort of in a "seig heil" motion.
Then (and in my opinion, this is the scariest part of
all) they perform the move that ties this whole bizarre
ritual together:
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- The
fall.
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- Standing with legs
shoulder width apart, pants open and free hand extended,
the wall grabber slowly topples forward, careening
towards the ground until his support hand makes contact
with the wall. Once he feels like he is balanced and
supported, the grabber will then attend to the task he
came in for.
-
- Not only is the
whole thing weird, but having someone close to you
flopping around like this tends to throw
your
concentration off.
-
- But hey, if you've
got to grab the wall to get things flowing, if that's
what works for you -- fine. Just plant yourself on the
linoleum, get to whizzing, and let's get on with our
lives.
-
- Unfortunately,
the man in the bathroom with me didn't do this.
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- Up until this
point the guy had gone through enough of the motions for
me to conclude that he was indeed a wall grabber. But
what he did next went way beyond anything I could have
possibly ever imagined…
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- Instead of
thrusting his free hand out into space so that he could
use it as a kickstand (or whatever you want to call it)
he proceeded to get a two-handed death grip on himself,
step forward a little, and then (instead of doing the
fall),
-
- he leaned
forward and rested his forehead
against the wall.
-
- OK -- I'll admit
that I've seen some fucked up things in my time, but this
was something entirely new and shocking.
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- This guy wasn't a
wall grabber....
He was a wall kisser.
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- I've always
suspected that the practice of wall grabbing came from
the same sort of fear that initiates most strange
bathroom behavior -the desire to not touch the toilet.
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- The prep work away
from the fixture, the fall -- these things to me seemed
to be in line with the people who flush using their feet,
or the ones who carry paper towels into the bathroom to
protect their hands.
-
- Hey,
toilets are
nasty. I get
that. But putting your hand on the bathroom wall isn't
really sanitary either, and lets not forget what's in
your other hand the whole time…
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- Me, I just get in
there and go. Bathrooms aren't pretty places, but as long
as you are willing to accept that fact that you can
indeed come out of one alive as long as you wash up, then
you can learn to accept that this is just a part of being
a human being.
-
- I flush with my
hand; I turn the faucets on and off the same
way.
-
- But there's no
way in hell you'd catch me putting my face up against
that wall.
-
- When the gentleman
in the bathroom with me took it that extra step, I
basically lost it. I wasn't really finished using the
facility, but I sure as hell wasn't going to hang around
to find out what he had in mind for an
encore.
-
- It was time to
go.
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- I closed up shop,
washed my hands, and reached for a towel.
-
- And while I was
drying off and getting ready to leave, the man actually
turned his head towards me (never breaking contact with
the wall) and said in a very loud voice,
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- "Have a good
one!"
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- And in a voice
that only barely disguised the terror and disgust that I
was feeling at that very moment, I actually caught myself
saying,
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- "I
heard that"
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