BATHROOMS!

In a free capitalistic country such as America, it is really refreshing to know that freedom abounds in all areas. Take for example lavatories. While men usually have no specific requirement beyond a bush, open road, or a tire that is still upon a car, women need more creature comforts even in this; the most odd of places. Can you picture your wife squatting in a field with a roll of leaves in her hand? Probably not, but many men can picture it of themselves out of true life experience; and that is just during pledge week at the college fraternity!

Bathrooms are perhaps one of the most intimate places on earth. We spend a lot of time naked in there, and there are usually mirrors. What greater example of vulnerability and hideousness is there than that? If you’re not in one with a moon cut out on the door then you are probably in some sort of modern version of the crapper. With a few stalls and urinals on the wall most men are satisfied. When manufacturers get clever with group canal basins in the middle of the bathroom for whizzing, many guys get uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the fact of whipping yourself out and waving it all over the place that has the modest a bit wary of this bathhouse style fixture. There are still also, great feelings of homophobia among many males in this society. The penile aversion even goes so deep as to inspire the catchy men's room phrase "if you shake it more than three times, you're playing with it".

Women on the other hand will often join hands, hop skip and jump their way from the restaurant dinner table to the restroom together. This for men is a big no no! Aside from the obvious discomfort among patrons when men might hold hands, most he-men are not coordinated enough to hop or skip without tripping over themselves and thus looking like a boob.

Ladies use these bathroom breaks as social interludes with likeminded compatriots to gossip and make fun of their dates. Guys who might be forced to stand in line on mass at a sporting event have a more Neanderthal socialization. It is often accompanied by loud drunken rhetoric, and cattle sounds including the famous moo-cow calls as they wait to relieve themselves. Now you know why Bessie is always loudest when she is standing in the field. She's full and needs to be tapped!

Sparse as male restrooms can be, the contrast is that some women’s rooms actually have furniture. What better place to sit and wait for your friends who are doing their business than in a chase lounge by the sink area? Upscale locations have their own separate sitting room; sort of like a classy family room for the urinally challenged. Who wants to talk to someone through a stall room door when we can converse in the comforts of home and still share a urethral experience?

At swanky hotels and establishments there are often finely dressed gentlemen standing at the wait with fine linen towels, a smile, and a plate that you are suppose to fill with money. For guys, the general consensus is “look dude I’m already in here because of waste so don’t expect me to give away my money as an additional cost to pooping”. That doesn't work. Thank goodness they don't charge dimes anymore to enter bathroom stalls. That was a post World War II idea that must have come from the ranks of Third Reich bathroom designers. More refined once again, the ladies might not mind it if there was a finely dressed man in their bathroom if he was perhaps, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, or Brad Pitt. Nevertheless giving guys money in a bathroom would seem somewhat tawdry as demonstrated by Richard Gere in the movie American Gigolo.

Technological advances such as the bidet are mind blowing. Somebody dedicated their life to the pursuit of such a device! Do you realize how many hours have been contributed by countless engineers, designers, and craftsman so they could create a piece of equipment to wash your tooshie hands free? A lofty goal perhaps, but can anyone take credit for such an invention with a strait face? “I invented the crack washer and it made me a zillion-air; mostly because women don’t like to touch themselves down there!” How would you like to ride the crest of that wave all the way to the bank?

Of course this is the 21st century and there are those who think we have evolved enough to have unisex bathrooms. This seems to be an invitation to trouble. Not since they started putting infant changing tables in men’s bathrooms has such obvious evidence surfaced that the women are guiding the unisex concept. Where else can she slap the unsavory for not lowering the seat, chastise those without aim, and enhance her love life by meeting that one in a million good-looker? After all Brad Pitt has to whiz just like the rest of us.

The Birds, the Bees and the Trees

Spring; when a young man’s fancy turns to…..aaaachooooo! That’s right. With all of the joys and awakenings of warmer weather comes the bane of many a sensitive schnoz. This is the season that tissue manufacturers love. Pollen is in the air and while a romp in the hay may be a wonderful thing, for many it is not so – not with birds, bees, trees and plants looking to spawn! The itchy noses and watery eyes are not usually signs of amoré. When it comes to plants, however, your sniffer is a good indicator that love is in the air. Most people don’t know that they are involved in such an elaborate, intimate dance with their surroundings. If you stop to think about it, people do an awful lot of breathing so it is impossible to avoid inhaling those things that are used for the birds and the bees by many a plant.

A report from the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology indicates that there are over 250,000 species of pollen-producing species. Holy cow, talk about Sodom and Gomorrah of the Environment! There are only about 100 types of trees, still an ecological harem, that causes the nose to know what it knows, ya know? The stuff can be downright irritating. Not like the “hey, you’re on my hair” annoyance, that you might be willing to put up with, but more like the uncontrollable, premature kind of a dog trying to mark his territory on the wall, couch, rug, closet, your foot, or any other surface that he deems in needing of identification.

Most things of illustrious beauty - for instance, plants trees, flowers and Cheryl Tiegs displayed on the hood of a Porsche all exhibit the same eye-watering characteristics. Their stuff gets under your eye lids enough to make you cry. It gives new meaning to the saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It’s more like a finger in your socket as opposed to something soft and soothing. So what are you willing to sacrifice in the name of beauty? How much Visine are you willing to carry for your comfort while this orgy of replication continues?

The evidence of this reproductive decadence is all around us on certain spring mornings when you take a gander at your automobile. There is enough pollen on it to make you think that little green men from outer space with severe dandruff conditions have been walking across the hood. The green powder is everywhere. Is it any wonder that with so much “seed” around looking for a place to go that people start acting weird? There is restlessness, the desire to want to romp, and the renewed energy of a puppy’s enthusiasm to grab a hold of the first leg passing by for a fast-paced waltz.

Of course, humankind has taken this bit of nature and turned its need for pill-popping, antihistamine-taking and syrup-swallowing into a multibillion dollar industry. There are medicines, devices, masks and all sorts of things to make your body unaware of the relentless bombardment of the reproductive cycle to which you are being exposed (and without a raincoat, too). So thorough is man’s allergic reaction that these medical comforts distract your body enough that you’d never know you were surrounded by so much of nature’s pornography. It’s not like you’re going to find much of a centerfold, though, unless you happen to be reading Home and Garden.

The Beautiful People

Have you ever noticed that even though beauty may be in the eye of the beholder there are some folks whom the good fairy has touched with a magic prettiness wand? Bodies can be stunning but without a face to go with it the package becomes a reduced value in today’s society. We can all generally agree these specially blest individuals belong to the sect of beautiful people. Not only are they far and above better looking than us all but they flaunt a pretty power by only going to certain places while avoiding other select areas. Their presence can make an establishment chic or a location the in place. The rest of us schlogs and also-rans simply don’t measure up in the attractiveness pageant of life.

Universities are one example where you will find a higher percentage of beautiful people per capita. By sheer numbers good lookers are found in large colleges and educational settings. Perhaps beauty knows that education is a good thing. It’s either that or student’s parents send them away to college investing thousands in a sort of reverse cosmetic surgery procedure. Parents bank on college lore. Their secret desire is for their looker of a child to drink too much, party too much, and somehow ruin their stunning good looks in the college coed frat house.

On the sly, parents hope their kid will get in with the self-abusive roommate type in the dorm that can lead miss cuteness down the path toward the facially challenged. The parents are always less attractive than the coed they are paying to send to the institution of higher learning too. If your parents pushed you repeatedly in your high school years to “get a good education, go to college, make something of yourself” (all which are code words in their diabolically hideous and deceptive plan to ruin your beauty) now you know the real reason for their entire non-stop pushing and prodding. It is because you are better looking than them, or at least you were until you went to college and started the long slide into plainness. Want proof? Hold your college freshman yearbook picture in one hand and then look in the mirror. After the initial scream and jolt you’ll see the truth. Remember when you were more beautiful?

As you look back now I’m sure it’s clear why you noe hear the whispers from your contemporaries. “What happened to them” is a common phrase gently spoken between two of your colleagues as they snicker and work hard not to point noticeably at you. The one asking the question is always someone with more bugged out eyes or a disappointed disgusted look on their face. Remember this is all the work of your parents! Parents are the same couple of people who told us “I see you making that face behind my back. You better stop it or your face will get stuck that way!” They tell us so many stories its hard to know which ones are true!

There are certainly definable categories of good looks. The upper echelon involves the model kind of looks. This is the Christy Brinkly, Tyra Banks, Cheryl Tiegs type who have made a living with their face and form. Generally they are tall long legged beauties that are built with stick like figures reflecting their daily diet of rice cakes, scallions, bean sprouts and Diet Sprite soda portioned into quantities fit for feeding small animals or birds.

“You eat like a bird.” I remember that phrase my father use to tell me all the time when I was growing up. So averse to eating was I that I use to sneak off to the bathroom every night at dinner and not return until the plates were being cleared from the table. That could take hours! I could tell you stories about how to survive in a bathroom for days but that’s another column all together.

The food razzing eventually got my attention and I started eating more and more until I discovered I was in love with food. By then it was too late! That’s another one of those ways parents steal your beauty. They turn you on to some intoxicating substance knowing all the while that your above average youthful looks are doomed with the first bite of cheesecake. Ever wonder why the folks are always pleading with you to eat? Now you know!

The Farrah Fawcett types of individuals are in the Helen category. The term Helen is lifted from David Lance Goins 1987 writing that suggests that Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus and Leda, had a face that ". . . launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." Goins' conclusion is that “Here we have a useful, dispassionate, scientific measure of beauty: a helen. One helen is sufficient good looks to launch one thousand ships, and to cause the destruction by fire of an entire city.” It’s no wonder such beauty is often described by over zealous lonely men as “Smokin’! Those objectifying guys (which is another way to say all men) are always from one of the lesser looks variety that I am about to describe.

Beneath the Helen grouping is the generally good looking set of folks. Most of us in any lower class in the beauty procession of life would consider ourselves blessed to have a date with one of the good looking people. The next category into which most of us fall is the plain crowd. The unfortunate buggers on the descending scale next are the homely followed by the ugly and finally the eeewwwweeee what happened to them category.

Recently I was on a beach where one could view slinky blonds, lanky brunettes, and sultry redheads scantily clad in the latest fashion of skimpy swimwear showing as much skin as possible without being hauled off to jail for indecent exposure. Beauties go to the beach! It’s like a flesh smorgasbord. Find a nude beach and you’ve got Playboy Magazine live! For most of us beaches of any kind is a nice atmosphere as sun worshippers in all shapes and sizes enjoy this form of Mother Nature. Some of us however simply out rank others in the pursuit of age defying personage as we struggle to appear as if we have found the fountain of youth.

Take a look at the street where you live. There are certainly one or two people who could be considered truly beautiful. On my block there are a couple sets of those types (I put that in there so my neighbors will wonder who else (besides themselves) might win the “mirror mirror on the wall” contest. Some have it naturally; others work hard to achieve and maintain the gorgeousness mask. It is a mask you know. Eventually those who buy into all of this exterior beauty nonsense are destined to be disappointed. “Time will take its toll upon you no matter what.” That’s another one my parents drilled into my head. You could end up looking like Joan Rivers. She’s had so many facelifts that when her knees knock she gets a headache! Beauty should not be that important. Interior good looks are a much better quality. You have to be somebody who can see past all of the good looking flesh though in order to find that.

Sometimes you can look at a group of folks and see the physical beauty they once possessed. As the year goes by it becomes harder to detect. There is the young who stand the best chance of being a beauty. In adulthood we peak in our attractive physique. By middle age the wrinkles are starting to pop up like you made a face and it got stuck that way. Oh my goodness my parents were right!