I am a toilet person.
It’s amusing and mildly embarrassing to read that line I have written above, but it is the truth. I am a toilet person because this is the space where for those 15 minutes of crapping you have the license to be cut off from the world. You don’t have to answer calls, reply to e-mails or feel guilty about reading a book when you should be working. It is this solitary haven that you can escape to whenever nature calls, in a world populated with far too many people.
I have been cautious with admitting this fact. I think I have only subjected two people to this thought so far, both of whom reacted with contorted faces of disgust. But I now have validation!
From Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov (not necessarily a literary genius but endlessly imaginative and bloody entertaining). Excerpt from what seems to be a dinner table conversation between 3 people:
‘In your toilet at home you can go at any time, even if you don’t need too. You can stay for hours, read a book or read cartoons. You can simply rest your chin on the palm of your hand and think. No other room gives you such privacy. This is the most important room, you know. The most important room.’
… ‘Those are private rituals, for your eyes only. Because nobody sees you there. I don’t think even God looks at you.’
And other insanely funny stuff including a diversionary chapter on the Great History of the Toilet and reflections like:
‘When I was a kid, I went to the village movie theatre and wondered why nobody ever went to the toilet. All those Indians, cowboys, entire Roman legions (LOL) and no one took a shit or peed.’ [Stuff in parentheses added by me.]
Lest you be dissuaded from the book, it is about a writer getting a divorce. The above and several other topics are just the protagonist’s thought diversions.
In my attempt to find a relevant photo for this post, found these two hilarious ones:
And a Flickr group on toilets! http://www.flickr.com/groups/toilets/pool/
