It’s the bathroom, the restroom, the water closet, the loo, the john and the lavatory. (But they only call it the lavatory on airplanes. Believe you me, I’ll tamper with whatever the fuck I want to … including the free tampons they offer.)
We have so many names for such a simple device: the shitter. It’s a toddler-sized receptacle that willingly receives all that is unholy, but it’s simultaneously the only place where we can drop all our roles and just be ourselves.
I once had a miracle-dream, a dream that can only be realized in our everyday lives if an angel were to descend from the heavens and will it to be.
A bright white light blinds my face. I’m flung into a massive row of creamy white stalls – around 300 neatly situated next to one another, all handicap sized. The perk: nobody is there. Nobody to judge my unusually gaseous explosions due to that Chipotle spree I had last week. Nobody is there to put you in that awkward situation where they kind of look at you in between the crack of the stall to double check if you’re in there, then kind of push the door to make you really nervous that it might open and they’ll see you doing Sudoku on your right thigh. The beauty lies in the vacancy.
I walk closer to the stalls, poised to select “the one.” I don’t want to be boxed into the middle ones that people can see via some MacGyver mirror-shit when they’re washing their hands. That’s bullshit. And I avoid the first stall at all costs because it offers entrants a full view of my sweatpants gently fallen at my ankles as I do the booty duty.
All preferences in mind, I run down the corridor of colossus shitters and choose the last one: the holy vault. As I close the door behind me, I notice the toilet is the size of a curled-up Ryan Seacrest. Thank god. I’m tired of shitting into toilets that have the circumference of my anus. It’s like sticking a pipe up your ass, like Schwinning yourself on a bike with a stolen seat. I slide my weighty backpack off my sweaty-ass shoulders and what’s this?! There’s actually a goddamn hook to hang it on! Fuck yeah. With everything perfectly in order, I let out a breathy “ooohhh” and gently lay my hairy butt-cheeks onto the porcelain-white bowl. The rest is history …
Whoa! I don’t know where the fuck this article just went. Let’s get back to some more coherent analysis on the status of shitting at UC Davis.
Unfortunately, UC Davis has an overabundance of poor crappers, what I like to call lo-fidelity shitting apparati. Here is my survey of these – the most important rooms on campus, based on three years, one quarter and two weeks of careful research:
MU: Horrible. Have you seen the holes in the stalls? No…not through them…look AT them? Shit’s creepy as fuck. And that middle stall is smaller than my shoulder width, so I have to shit sideways.
Olson: Always has what I like to call “leaky-ass floor syndrome” – if you enter that bathroom, you’re guaranteed to get wet. Every time I go there I’m like, “GODDAMN I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT SOME OF MY FUCKING SCUBA GEAR UP IN THIS BITCH.” AKA you can’t shit and go to class right after with soaking pants, so you might as well just piss on the floor. Nobody will know the difference.
Haring: Everything in this building is normal except the bathrooms. It’s like you’ve walked into a horrible re-run of AirBud, complete with a locker room. It’s a motherfucking early 70s bathroom is what it is. However, it is the biggest HOTBED for Grout jokes on campus. Over and Grout.
Peety Jay Shields AKA La Lib: There are an insane number of bathrooms in PeeJays, so I’m going to focus on the men’s fourth floor north side bathroom. My friend Reid SWEARS the right hand urinal in this canary yellow bathroom has the unbelievable flush strength to handle one more than number one…if you catch his drift.
Sci Lec: Great bathrooms. There are two problems, however. One, the crack for the stall is about as big as my head, so you might as well leave the goddamn door open when you take a shit. Second, for some reason they never re-fucking-stock the goddamn toilet paper when they need to. And it doesn’t help that it’s 1/10 ply so it feels like wiping your ass with a bubble gum wrapper.
Dutton: The holy grail of toilets. The true room of rest. It’s as if you’ve walked into a Venetian paradise. Their lights are amazing: none of this fluorescent, bug-attracting bullshit. They went the extra mile here and bought the soft, gentle, daylight spectra that gives you that oh-so-natural touch that makes you feel as if you were doing your duty outdoors with the bears and butterflies. Plus, they have Hiny-Hiders. (The crack in the stall door is covered. AKA the clouds in the heavens are parted and Angels sing whenever I walk in there.)
Due to the tight constraints of the UC Davis sexual harassment policy, DAVE KARIMI was only able to conduct his research in male restrooms. If you’d like to share stories or comment on the supposed bed behind the sinks in the first-floor women’s bathroom in Haring, you should shit -err, shoot – him an e-mail at dkarimi@ucdavis.edu.
