Last Call for a Men’s Room Commando

The Haven interrupts its regular publishing to note the passing of a person renowned for liberating women from long ladies room lines in bars: Mrs. Hilda Matilda Herman, Men’s Room Stormtrooper.

Restroom lines were a chronic problem at the bars where Mrs. Herman lived: on the Leelanau, a peninsula in Michigan’s Up North known for cherry orchards, scenic beauty, and Lake Michigan beaches. Owners maximized the floor space for drinking by minimizing the areas in which to eliminate it. Consequently, the typical ladies room was two stalls and a sink in an area the size of a janitor’s closet. Even the flies found them claustrophobic. Worse, the tight quarters limited their throughput: lines formed on week nights by ten, and weekends by nine.

Leelanau women dealt with this by keeping “port calls” to a minimum. And no one did it better.

One reason: their bladders had been toughened by years of drinking cheap beers — mainly Pabst, Blatz, Hamm’s, and Schlitz. As a result, while the average American’s pouch could hold a pint of pee, a Leelanau woman’s sac could manage a pint-and-a-half. Even two, if they regularly Kegeled their pelvic parts. No doubt about it: Leelanau women’s bladders have exceptional elasticity and the tensile strength of Kevlar®, and thus need only infrequent relieving.

The other reason: when lines formed, women weren’t bashful about using the bar’s overflow facility — which, on the Leelanau, was the nearest grove of trees. Women knew where to go: owners put a toilet paper holder by the nearest exit, and strung lights ‘tween the trees to help women navigate in the dark. They also affixed wooden handholds to the trunks at “squat” level, to help the ladies steady themselves while doing their business. Thus, upon choosing a tree, they ladies had only to follow the Up North SOP:

• Drop the undies to mid-thigh (never to the ankles; they might be struck by the stream);
• Go low;
• Make water; then
• Waggle the hips to shake off lingering drops and “air-dry” one’s posterior.

“Making water in the woods” wasn’t bad. The pine-scented woods smelled better than any bar’s ladies room. And during the Winter, one could write one’s name in the snow. Still, women needed to avoid squatting on an upslope, else their wee might flow down into their shoes. And take care not to pee on a pile of leaves, lest they get hit by back-spatter.

To sum up, women, for most of the Leelanau’s history, had two choices when a line formed at a bar’s ladies room: wait their turn, or use the overflow facility.

In 1968, Mrs. Herman introduced a third: use the men’s room. And not by first asking the guys for permission, but rather taking it by force.

First, the entrance was breached with a coup de main. That was delivered by the Phalanx: nine women in a close-order formation, three deep and three abreast. The 2nd and 3rd ranks gripped the shoulders of the women immediately ahead with their right hands. The center and right rows slipped their left arms ‘round the waists of the ladies to their left. The resulting matrix had exceptional structural integrity. No member could be tripped up and fall; the rest held her up. None could be yanked out of formation; the rest held her in place. Once in motion, the Phalanx couldn’t be turned aside; thrusts at a flank were absorbed by the group. And it couldn’t be stopped; when ranks three and two locked arms and leaned in, their kinetic energy was conveyed to the first.

The result was a body of women to be reckoned with. Guys who tried to halt the Phalanx before the men’s room door were bounced off the walls or dashed to the floor. If they pulled an outward-swinging door shut and tried to hold it, the front rank would grip the knob, the Phalanx would throw itself in reverse, and door and defenders would be yanked out into the bar. If they closed an in-swinging door and pressed their bodies against it, the Phalanx would hurl door and pressers back into the men’s room.

Once the entrance was breached, most guys knew they had but seconds to clamp their sphincters, pull up, zip up, and get out. Those who did escaped untouched.

Unfortunately, a few usually resisted. Men in the stalls, bearing down to eliminate a few more inches, pressed their backs to the walls and their feet against the doors. And guys at the urinals, determined to finish the business at hand. The fools. The women, having split into teams of three, kicked in the stall doors, jerked the occupants off their seats, and tossed them through the men’s room door with their pants still ‘round their ankles.

As for the guys at the urinals, the women needed only to stand right next to them. That was a gross violation of their personal space, and it always had the desired effect: the guys’ urethral sphincters involuntarily slammed shut (often with such force that they wouldn’t unclench for hours). With their flows thus decisively nipped in the bud, there was nothing to do except zip up and leave.

With that, the women had but one task left to complete their mission: “Hold until relieved.”

To be clear, Mrs. Herman didn’t relish the role of Men’s Room Stormtrooper. She never crowed about creating the Phalanx. Showboated when training women in commode commando tactics. Or enjoyed the breachings, the mopping-ups, and occasional demonstrations to make guys surrender, such as administering a stern tighty-whitie wedgie to the biggest in the room.

Nonetheless, to her dying day, Mrs. Herman believed she’d done what she had to, and would keep doing it for so long as bars offered inadequate lady plumbing. If that caused some guys to suffer from shy bladder syndrome for the rest of their lives, so be it.