On Tuesday night, I went out to Mario’s Keller Bar in Minneapolis to hear Annie Wallick and a few other guys perform. (For those of you who have tried checking out her website and came up empty, she’s been in a constant struggle between maintaining the website and paying the rent—rent has been winning out so far.) Since it’s a bar and the show lasts a couple hours, I usually hit the water pretty hard and get a couple cups while I’m there, inevitably leading to a trip to the bathroom. Go figure.
I should point out that there’s a very special feature about the men’s room at this bar: there’s no lock on the door. There’s a toilet and a urinal along with the sink, paper towel dispenser, etc. Thus, if you want to take a pee, you may have company while you’re in there. Also thus, if you’re one of those people who has trouble peeing while other people are around, you could be in for a difficult couple minutes.
After two cups of water, I got up and headed over to use the facilities. I walked in and there were already two guys in there, so I leaned back against the wall until the guy standing in front of the toilet was done. I walked up, lifted the seat and started to pee. (I like Denis Leary, but I don’t emulate all of the habits that make him an asshole—“I use public toilets and I piss on the seat!”) Shortly thereafter, another guy came in and took the place of the person who had just stopped using the urinal.
(While I don’t want to get entirely off-track, I feel the need to point out that later that night, someone paid homage to the porcelain gods. Unfortunately, that person chose the wrong god to worship. If you’ve ever seen how cigarette butts can build up inside the bottom of a urinal… you get the idea.)
Anyway, like I was saying, there were two of us in the men’s bathroom taking a pee and anyone could walk in, wait for us to finish, then take our place. Well, the first happened—someone walked in. The other two didn’t happen because “anyone” was a female. She came in the door, said, “How you guys doin’?”, spat into the sink and walked out again.
Meanwhile, both of us are staring at her, watching this happen. I responded with “Good, how are you?”, but she walked out and didn’t answer. You know, it was bad enough that she didn’t bother to knock and peek in, but not engaging in a conversation while I was peeing? That’s just plain rude. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was the one who laid down the sacrifice to said porcelain gods. Just walk in, say “Hi” to the poor guy sitting there with his pants around his ankles, then BLEARGH! Into the urinal and all over the floor. Sure, she could have used the women’s toilet, but she wouldn’t want to be an asshole now, would she?
