If I Weren’t All Dressed Up, I Would Just Piss On You

Traveling constantly on highways for work has made me a pro at finding the cleanest bathroom at any highway exit. Part of what stops folks from finding tidy bathrooms during long distance drives is limiting oneself to the usual suspects: truck stops, fast food joints, a Starbucks. Mid-range hotels (Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn) are a clean, often underutilized bathroom bonanza.

You might be deterred by the thought of the hotel clerk standing at the front desk when you walk in, thinking, “Surely they will not invite me in to use their bathroom when I am not a guest of the hotel.”

You are right: I don’t wait for anyone to show me their nearest bathroom. I use the same strategy I call upon when I am carrying bags full of outside food and drinks into movie theaters: I walk into the target area with a smile, head held high, saying hello to all of the employees I see. I act like whatever I am doing is absolutely the most natural thing to be doing and would a person this kind really be breaking a rule? I have an approximate 99% success rate.

For the record, I am cheating at this game. Not only am I  a young white man without any significant physical deformities, but I am often dressed in my bank auditing clothes: collared shirt, dress slacks, and sometimes a tie. This adds a flavor of “official business” when I walk into somewhere and act like I have always belonged wherever that happens to be, making me extra likely to succeed.

If I weren’t a transguy, I would feel more guilty about doing this. Dealing with bathrooms has been one of the biggest consistent stressors for me since transitioning, even many years after I have begun passing in public. I have no interest in using stand-to-pee devices and even if I did, with my lack of coordination and general haplessness, I would surely piss all over myself at inopportune moments. It may not seem like a big deal, but I still have nightmares that I have to pee at a client and all I find in the whole building are urinals. Or sometimes the bathrooms in my nightmares are just out-of-order altogether. For me, finding a stall I can use in a public restroom still brings a palpable sense of relief every time, on top of the usual sense of relief a person gets from using the restroom.

My search for a clean roadside restroom and my trans identity intersected recently when I walked inside a Holiday Inn Express to use the restroom on my way to a client one Tuesday morning. I was in a hurry: I was going to be late to the bank if I didn’t hustle. When the men’s room door was locked, I cautiously poked my head into the women’s restroom. This particular hotel had a men’s room which was just a single room (meaning one occupant would result in no one else being able to use it), while the women’s restroom had multiple stalls. I waited outside of the men’s room, standing in the hallway, hoping for the current user to quickly finish their business.

Another business man walked up, also in an apparent hurry, and saw me waiting. He sighed. He pointed to the women’s restroom door. I can’t remember if he actually said something out loud or if I just knew what he was asking, and I explained it was not a single like the men’s room, but had stalls. Although nothing was said aloud, we both seemed to have silently acknowledged that if it had been a single like the men’s room we would have considered using it.

The man then snorted, “We should just go on in.” In a decidedly disgusted tone, he added, “We are allowed to do that now, you know.”

I was caught completely off guard by his choice to mock the transgender community at 7:15 am on a Tuesday morning while chatting with a complete stranger. I was horrified, speechless, and angry all at once.

Things I wanted to say, in no particular order:

1. Actually, North Carolina’s HB2 bill and other transphobic bills like it restrict bathroom use for all of us. Bills like HB2 make it less legal for all of us, even stupid transphobic idiots, to use a bathroom that is not labeled with our corresponding gender.
2. Isn’t it ironic you managed to find a transguy who was observing a stupid gendered bathroom sign to make this hideous remark to?
3. Doesn’t this very situation demonstrate how DUMB it is to assign gendered signs to bathrooms?
4. Imagine feeling like you do now, really having to piss, and being terrified to do it in a normal public bathroom!

I said nothing. I left in a huff. I didn’t know how to say these things without potentially getting punched in the mouth. And I had a bank in a small Ohio town to get to.