The world is a toilet
The world is a toilet. This is a fact. One I guess I already knew, especially after two too many beers, but you cannot completely comprehend the cold, hard, and disgusting reality of this fact until you travel.
Often, the world is a toilet and it’s ok - because in a forest or park (or someone’s back yard) you are not so much polluting the environment, as you are adding to it. You can justify your actions with arguments about additional nutrients and fertile humus layers, but it’s still just shit and piss.
However, even when it’s not ok – the world is still a toilet. When you are lost in a strange city, with no facilities in sight, a desperate, basic need dictates your actions and environment arguments become unnecessary.
The fact the world is a toilet was brought home to me at 3AM in the morning, somewhere north of London, when the night bus to the airport made a scheduled stop. The bus trip so far had taken over two hours and I was experiencing an increasingly desperate need to relieve myself of the two cups of coffee I had needed to drink to wake up at 1AM. I enquired with the driver, (who was smoking a cigarette and did not look in any hurry to continue our journey), if there were any bathroom facilities nearby.
I had already reconnaissed the area within visual range and had observed nothing helpful in the gloom of either direction. It was a shadowy, concrete jungle, devoid of any living thing, apart from pollution resistant bacteria living in the piles of trash that seemed to be growing against every curb and storm drain. There wasn’t even a low hedge or road barrier to pretend modesty behind.
The driver said no, there was no bathroom, and gestured into the darkness down the street vaguely with one arm, as if to suggest there was someplace, somewhere in that direction, where I might find what I was looking for.
He knew, that I knew, that we both knew, that there were clearly no toilets nearby. We also both knew what I was probably going to do next.
As I was enquiring how long it would be until the bus departed the station and how long until the next stop, I noticed another male passenger appearing from the darkness outside the halo of street light surrounding the bus. That he had obviously just completed what I hoped to achieve, in the very near future, was apparent in his relieved stride and belt buckle fumble.
Desperately and hopefully, I asked him if he had found a toilet nearby and his reply opened up a world of possibilities (excuse the pun). “Yeah” he mumbled, turning and gesturing expansively towards somewhere other than here, just as the bus driver had done, “the world”.
