Nixta Sinks

The cost of a wee

I was born in a Catholic country and raised near the Catholic Church with a suitable mix of CoE psalms and hymns in the morning, public school guilt-mongering, and a healthy dose of perpetual shame and shaming. Perhaps that's the reason that I feel guilty about using restrooms (or bogs) in restaurants/bars/etc. that I'm not strictly at that moment a patron of.

I snuck into a tiny coffee shop and bakery down in Soho (they even have/had a shirt) on a very cold day having enjoyed a cup of hot cocoa and a missed connection at a nearby restaurant to use their toilet, knowing that they were largely empty, that they had a toilet and that it was clean. I felt justified also since I had bought a couple of cups of coffee there in the previous 10 days. The whole time I occupied the tiny one-toilet restroom, I kept my ear open rather obsessively for any sign of disquietude from without at my presence within but I couldn't really tell, passive aggression being what it is in this town. Nonetheless on my way out I decided that since we didn't have any bread at home at the time and since I was still looking for a place that might sell decent bread (American bread being revolting, sugary, or sourdough), that I would purchase a baguette. It cost $1.75 and I only had $20 bills on me, for which I apologised thinking that the politeness of my initial request had gone rather well, at which point the saleslady (who had been having an intensely friendly conversation with some Soho nobs before my appearance from the bathroom) snapped "No you don't, I saw some dollars in there". Now, it could just have been that she was offering to sell me the loaf for a dollar, or it could have been that she was practicing her passive-aggression on me, or maybe she just had trouble controlling the volume of her voice. Fortunately I was able to fan out the remaining notes in my hand to demonstrate that I didn't have anything incriminating there, took my change, my newly acquired loaf, and left.

This went, by the way, significantly better than an occasion in English when I was 13: I was sat at my desk with my hands behind my back (something I find quite comfortable) during the headmaster's teaching of the class. He noticed and asked rather accusingly what I had behind my back, so I waved them in the air, palms forward, accompanied with what must have been a rather stupid smug grin, and for my exertions won the yelling of my life and a trip to his office at lunchtime (which thankfully consisted of no more than a resigned shake of the head, a sigh, and an admission of ignorance as to how to continue schooling me).

But back to the toilets! Why should I obsess so much about using their's? Why should I feel so much guilt that I should afterwards buy a loaf of bread, trying to interpret every event as other people's tut-tutting at my appalling behaviour? It's pathetic. People have gone to see shrinks for much less.