Mom: Random Phone Number, 7-7-08

The scenario is the same. We, the out of work, out of money and homeless, use city services to do our dailies. We’re scary to the lone users and the desperate dancers in public restrooms, but we have a right to privacy when taking a dump. Public restrooms offer us a measure of decency that is lacking in our lives, a moment of relief from the cold weather, cold people, and cold system that we meet. Public restrooms offer warmth and a moment of clean-ness that we occasionally need in our lives. Public restrooms offer several forms of social services that we can tap into such as phone numbers, addresses, and names of people that can help. Many outreach agencies advertise on these walls using the big expansive public walls around the sinks. Cold, impersonal, helpful. Sometimes.

But, it is what is posted inside the stalls that is more personal and useful. Men’s and women’s restrooms are no different except for the urinals. Both have stalls for the sit-down customer and ample wall space for the budding literati of the city who work through philosophical arguments about the meaning of something in short verse, or philosophical questions about the meaning of life asked by one and answered by another. There are famous quotes from famous movies, often farcical because the can-sitter may need "… the force …" to be with him. There are cat-fights played out on stall walls in which the new Hatfields and McCoys eek out revenge on each other. One cat-fight begins by calling Sara a bitch. With the obligatory rebuttal and escalation, someone else writes "Well, your sister’s a double bitch." Then there is the delineation of Sara’s ancestry back to Sodom and Gomorrah. Then the response, "Well, your sister sucked cock on Clinton at the White House." While enjoying this pants-free moment behind a locked stall door, this modern interpretation of passive-aggressive behavior is nothing but a history lesson in religio-political enlightenment of 20th century insults, and just goes to show that what goes around comes right back around and is recorded on bathroom stalls for the next reader, who, by-the-way, hopes Sara’s phone number has been left behind.

If one is so inclined – and happens to be carrying pencil and paper into the stall with him or her – there are numerous phone numbers to be had. These are the private, individual social services that can only be had from inside stall doors and don’t usually make it to the big wall; evidence of the private nature of this information. Phone numbers usually are accompanied by someone’s name and nothing else. However, many of these numbers come with advice: "For a good time, call Betty, 265-8103," leaving a clue as to the social service provided – a good time. And in that squatting moment the sitter has hope: Warm, personal help. Immediately. Not the slow gears of government and community based welfare, but Betty’s private, personal, smiling good time welfare. "Betty" is the cameo literature of stall-walls: It is the short biopic created in the reader’s mind on the small amount of information provided, and suddenly there is a storyline playing out in the stall. There is the "Betty" sigh – Ah-h-h, Betty - that launches pleasant memories that occupy us through the dump.

We, the out of work, out of money and homeless thank the city for its services. The public restroom does its job, as an institution dedicated to cleanliness, providing refuge, and privacy and entertainment. The public restroom takes care of our physical needs; the stall walls take care of the rest. Movin’ on.

This author’s favorite cameo is about AIDS and appears in men’s rooms throughout Cincinnati:

"Get tested. Your life is in your hands."

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There has been some discussion in my house over the above use of the phrase "cameo literature." It is considered bad form to legitimize a crime and give it credence when in reality it is graffiti, vandalism, and slogan-ism, none of which is true literature. However, I would argue that before building graffiti became a legitimate urban art form, pursued and protected by art connoisseurs and city councils, it was a crime. Cameo literature is the bit part a name or phrase plays in the individual’s life and can have as profound an effect as Kurt Vonnegut or AIDS does if the cameo’s information is acted upon. Or it can have as small an effect as to last only a moment like ice cream, as a warm pleasant memory. In the long run, this cameo appearance can re-write a person’s life story, can send that life on a tangent of explored (or unexplored) adventures therefore making one’s life story a biography and legitimate literature whether written down or not.