public restrooms
September 5

San Francisco

Parental Advisory: if you think this has anything to do with tea room antics, you're wrong. Stay anyway, you might learn something.

I'm talking about finding the public restrooms of Marin county. Wonderful Marin county. For those of you familiar with the territory, you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Public restrooms, in Marin? There aren't even any private restrooms, people are so self-contained in their perfect world that restrooms became extinct during the Age of Aquarius.

No, but really, there are restrooms in Marin, even public ones, and one of my hobbies has been to find, compare and contrast them. I say hobby but the real reason is more desperate. In my day job as a flower picker, I daily find a need to locate one of these comfort stations, sometimes with only seconds to spare.

In the early days of my research I knew of only one such place, it belonged to a gas station in Strawberry and you could see the door from the freeway, so come on, how public can you get?

Unfortunately it is not really near any of my sites, so when I had to go, I had to get in the truck and speed away, leaving my tools lying conspicuously around so that the lord or lady of the manor, or more likely the maid, could deduce that I would be returning. I haven't even seen some of the people in whose gardens I toil, let alone their toilets. I'm the help, and outdoor help at that.

But my years of practice at sniffing out public sex have also enabled me to find public restrooms. My intuition told me to investigate a park near a few of my clients, I mean, if it has tennis courts peopled by adults in the middle of the day, then there must be a restroom, maybe even a clubhouse, but I'll stop at restroom.

And I was right. This one has a single stall and a push down faucet that gushes water directly into your crotch for two seconds then shuts itself off, causing one to learn a dance part Paso Robles and part Whack a Mole. But this is one of my favorites, and like all the others, I rarely see another male withing a mile radius of the door who isn't under six and over sixty. It's like I've discovered Stepford.

And speaking of Mill Valley, it has a community center, with a very nice restroom inside, though one must pass by a receptionist to get to it. Since I work in Mill Valley, I consider myself part of the community, my answer if ever I'm challenged about using the facility.There is no one else wearing long pants or not sprouting a bike helmet from the cranium, so I do stick out and expect to be interrogated should noblesse oblige dry up before the winter rains.

Belvedere (these places start to sound like the suburbs of Camelot) has a town hall, and a deluxe restroom, with the ultimate accessory: a toilet seat cover dispencer.

It was during my first emergency wait-until-the-last minute AWOL, at the gas station throne, realizing I was sitting in some other guy's didn't-lift-the-seat urine and not caring because I was so desperate when I swore that whenever the phrase 'I don't care' enters my mind, I would grind to a halt, examine the situation immediately, and make my escape.

I wasn't used to using public restrooms for their obvious purpose, they were all gross and only good for standing at a urinal and showcasing. That was my life before fiscal responsibility meant driving sometimes close to forty miles a day, paying five dollars every time I wanted to return home, and not attending film festivals in Colorado. Public restrooms have become part of my working life reality.

But I am learning to make the most of them. One of my finds even has a tiny peep hole drilled between the stall and the urinal, and I don't think it's for ventilation. I now use one to wash my hands at the end of the day with special stinky soap that is supposed to prevent poison oak breakouts. I'm just getting over my third wave in three months, and this is a good preventative measure.

As is holding on to this job. I'm grateful for work, I'm using this money to catch up on bills while my other work has netted me enough to purchase a new (to me) truck. Yes, two videos, a photo shoot and a client was all it took to get this truck. It put me back on the financial edge again, but it was a necessary expense, and reminded me that I can make what I need. It may not always be Nirvanah, but it's there for me to attain.

what I'm listening to: KAT pirate radio in my truck.
what I'm reading: What to Listen for in Music, by Aaron Copeland

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