A Gentleman’s Guide To Bathroom Etiquette, by Matt Shirley

Introduction

From the moment our parents get tired of us shitting our pants, and decide it’s time for potty-training, we begin to explore the wonderful world of the bathroom.   With parental guidance, each of us learns the rights and wrongs of the bathroom realm—the dos and don’ts of numbers one through two.

But while our parents did their best to prepare us for the most common situations we’ll face in our bathroom careers, they had neither the time nor the social wherewithal to prepare us for the innumerable awkward situations we were sure to encounter in our adult toilet-using days.

This guide seeks to fill in the gaps; to give all of malekind a proper code of conduct—a playbook of sorts—to ensure that we are all on the same page. With proper education, the bathroom can be changed from a place of awkwardness and mystery into a place of laid-back comfort and mental and digestive release.

To demonstrate the details of bathroom etiquette, a fictional character is necessary.  Meet Dennis.  Dennis is a typical male: he likes sports and drinking and handies, and is unsteady when it comes to bathroom etiquette.  Dennis wishes there were a governing body for bathroom morality – a kind of United Nations of waste-relations – so he wouldn’t have to worry any longer.  Dennis is in luck.  The Gentleman’s Guide will give Dennis the piece of mind he requires to keep his mind at peace.

Definition of Terms

Family Bathroom: Includes all household bathrooms where there is a lone toilet.  Usually a considerable amount of privacy is available.  Dennis can feel at ease in his home-commode, but uncertainty lurks in the Family Bathrooms of others.

Small Public Bathroom or SPB: Encompasses all public bathrooms that contain fewer than two stalls and similarly, fewer than two urinals.  Dennis encounters these bathrooms when he eats at his local Chili’s or when he goes to work at his job at Met Life.  The relative intimacy and multiple interpersonal variables in the Small Public Bathroom strike fear in Dennis’s heart.

Large Public Bathroom or LPB:  Contains upwards of ten stalls and an even greater number of urinals.  Airports and sports stadiums often house LPBs, and while these bathrooms do leave room for varied behavior, they also have the highest potential for a life-changing personal exchange.

Urination

Aptly named, number one is somewhat less complicated than number two.  Maybe even two times less complicated.  But with all types of excrement evacuation, problems still arise.

Family Bathroom

There should be very few problems urinating in your own bathroom. And if you do encounter problems during this sort of urination, you are probably at least mildly retarded.  Get that checked out.

Rule number one when peeing at home: Keep the urine in the bowl.

If following this rule proves difficult, the urinator might consider sitting down. If one is to engage in this solution, he should take care not to step on his skirts as he gets up.

Rule number one for bodily function number one becomes even more important in Family Bathrooms that are not one’s own.

Let’s say Dennis is having dinner in the home of his girlfriend’s family. Dennis feels the urge to relieve himself. He must remember a few key things: First, he must hit the bowl at all costs (we already went over that).  But if his inaccuracies get the best of him, Dennis must remember to clean up after himself. Remnant traces of poor marksmanship are simply unacceptable in such situations.

After he has assured there will be no miscellany of whiz on or around the toilet, and flushes the evidence, he needs to go above and beyond, not only to make sure that the toilet seat is down, but to complete the toilet self-containment by lowering the lid as well.  Dennis might be tempted to think it a bit too much pomp and circumstance to put down the lid; he might feel it is as useless as wearing pants to a chatroullete party.  But, in such delicate circumstances, Dennis should treat the bathroom as a crime scene, leaving everything exactly how he found it.

When he is sure that no suspicions will arise concerning the commode, Dennis should spurn his genetic predisposition toward laziness and make an attempt to wash his hands.

But he should be sure not use the soap that looks like a star, because he is nowhere near good enough for that soap.

Scenario: Lets say Dennis has accidentally tinkled on his trousers. Whatever should he do?

Don’t panic, Dennis.  It’s happened to every man at one time or another and there’s an easy fix.  Wet the spot with some water and think of a predetermined excuse as to why there would be such a spot on your pants.  The most common excuse involves an accident whilst washing one’s hands.  Cleverly, this excuse will let your hosts know that you do in fact launder your hands post-urination, AND will explain the wet spot on your corduroys.

Dennis should feel free to be creative with his excuses, unless he’s a bad liar.  He doesn’t want to accidentally inform his future parents-in-law that he sometimes pisses himself.

Small Public Bathroom

Urinating in a Small Bathroom is trickier than in a Family Bathroom if only because there are more penises involved.

SPB Rule Number One:  No talking.

Under no circumstances should one’s zipper and one’s mouth be open at the same time.

Scenario: Dennis is relieving himself at work at one of the company urinals and his boss sidles up next to him.

Dennis must resist the temptation to start up an ass-kissing conversation.  Dennis should stare straight ahead, maybe glancing down every now and then to confirm that his aim is true.  If his boss knows his etiquette, he will do the same.

If Dennis finishes early (hey, it happens) and starts up a conversation with his boss while his boss remains “at work”, every code of bathroom etiquette gives his boss the right to punch Dennis in the dick.

Sometimes, Dennis, will have the sudden urge to take a gander at his neighbor’s package.  For the purposes of this guide, this term shall be coined as “wang-gazing.”

Dennis, wang-gazing is a very bad idea.  First, you’re going to be disappointed.  Your neighbor’s junk is going to make yours look like it was put in the Wonkavision machine from Willy’s chocolate factory and shrunk to a size comparable to the miniature Mike Teevee.  While it looks like you’re peeing from the top of a ladder, it appears that your neighbor is on the verge of snorkeling.

Additionally, your friend might catch you wang-gazing and get the wrong idea.  But this sentence implies that there is a right idea concerning wang-gazing.  No such reason exists and so him proposing fisticuffs on your ass is probably the logical reaction.

Large Public Bathroom

With the possibility of so many other patrons also using the facilities, Dennis must be careful to not forget the important rule he learned about small bathrooms when he enters a Large Bathroom setting: Don’t speak.  Once he has his mouth under control, he has to realize that the large bathroom is a much different beast; one that should to be handled with the utmost of care.

First, on personal space.

It has happened to each of us: we enter a huge bathroom with numerous vacant urinals and choose one that suits us.  There we proceed with that which we entered in the mind to accomplish.  We’re midstream, masterfully deploying the technique known in some circles as the Polish One-hander, when a gentleman saunters up and settles in at the urinal directly next to ours.

We want to say, “What’s the deal, prick?
But we do not.  After all, we are gentlemen.  We know that what has just transpired is a cardinal sin in the bathroom world.  But we keep quiet, with rule number one firmly in mind.  Still we seethe, because this sin seems to be not only accepted but even embraced, especially by some of the older bathroom patrons.

And so it becomes necessary to remind Dennis:  If you make your way in to a bathroom with at least 3 consecutive unoccupied urinals, you DO NOT choose one that is next to another gentleman.

Of course, if Dennis enters the bathroom at halftime of a Lakers game, he’ll probably have to urinate while rubbing shoulders with another fan.  But this fact alone does not mean that he has to like it and does not mean that said rubbing should take place when the bathroom population is two. Urination is a private business—much like fly-fishing. If Dennis were fishing in his little stretch of stream and another gentleman approached and stood right next to you, I reckon this man would be giving Dennis full permission to stomp a size-12 hole in his hindquarters.

A note on stalls.  The toilet is built for pooping. It should be used as such unless there are no other options.

Scenario: Dennis walks into a crowded airport bathroom to find some long lines at both the urinals and the stalls, what should he do?

First, as an act of courtesy to any man in need of defecatory relief, Dennis should get in the lines for the urinals, no matter how long they are.  Also, he should pick the same line for selfish reasons, as the urinal line is much more likely to show steady progression, rather than the fits and starts that are all too common when standing behind a fellow in the stall line who’s Taco Tico value meal is in its third trimester and whose labor pains are going to last well past Dennis’s departure time.

Additionally, Undigested Taco-Tico value meals are unpleasant to all five of Dennis’s senses.

Hand-washing

Contrary to popular belief, the main goal of hand-washing is not to clean one’s hands, but to prove to everyone that we aren’t lecherous heathens.  By giving his hands a quick once-over, Dennis assures his fellow gentlemen that they won’t contract any of his communicable diseases.  The rules are quite simple:  hand-washing needs to involve water, soap, and a drying period.  If paper towels are unavailable, hand dryers must be used in their stead, even if but for a few seconds.  Nobody expects Dennis to stand there for the 15 minutes required for a full hand dryer hand-drying.  It’s the attempt that counts.

And this, along with all of the rest of the rules of urination, will assure Dennis’s bathroom compatriots that he is a well-mannered fellow who has the decency to follow all the rules of bathroom etiquette.  Like a gentleman.

Until next time, when we explore the wonderful world of public defecation, may your aim be true and may there always be plenty of toilet paper available in case it is not.