Private Bath

Good Morning,

The average American spends 1.7 yrs.* of their life engaged in toileting activities. For most of us, it’s safe to say that’s 1.7 years we’d like to have back. Much to my confusion I have discovered this might not always be the case.

Take for example the recent piece of short creative nonfiction by Fleda Brown (poet lauriet of Delaware and contributor to creativenonfiction.org)

Private Bath by Fleda Brown (selected passages)

"Whether we were in Kensington palace, or at a coffee shop on the corner, I would remain alert for an obscure bathroom, one on a lower level, with poor lighting, one that could be easily overlooked, that I might have to myself."

strange but okay...

"At the lake, too, it’s always been pretty much the same. I dearly love the outhouse, with its high window so that the other world is nothing but the tops of trees. I love the rich smell of accumulation, mixed with earth, everything changing back into itself."

okay now I’m concerned, you love the smell of decomposing poop?

"But if someone knocks at the outhouse door, even if they politely drift down the hill pretending not to wait, I’m trapped by time. No longer is time open-ended, no longer are all things possible. I have an assignment—to finish my business, to be a member of the give-and-take of human society."

knock, knock, knock…

"But at home in my own bathroom, I’m Rodin’s Thinker under the glorious sun of the heat lamp, bending over Doonesbury, Dilbert, Boondocks, the glassy ease of Metropolitan Home"

here’s a comment from the outside world…the bending action is a little too graphic

"I balance on the edge of the seat, between feeling and action, between intimacy and the revelation of nature.

I don’t need quiet out there, I need quiet in my soul. I need time and space, the brief illusion of eternity. To sit on the cliff of the toilet, disenchantment only a door away."

...wipe me! wipe me!

Recently I e-mailed Fleda with this message in the attempt to uh get to the bottom of this piece.

Dear Fleda Brown,

I am new to your work and have a question. Recently, I read a piece you had published on the Brevity website.

The piece is called "Private Bath" (Issue.22, Fall 2006). I was wondering if you would be able to tell me where you found the courage to write this piece?

Writing about one's experiences in the bathroom is tricky work. Somehow you've managed to make something taboo or off-limits in polite company very poetic.

Am I reading this correctly, that you consider a bathroom to be a private sanctuary?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and/or your reply.

Sincerely,

Amanda Vallo

Dear Amanda,

It didn’t take much courage—I just tried to connect that experience to the outside world so that the “bathroom” aspects wouldn’t seem so “up front.” Sure, I do consider it a private sanctuary. Don’t you?

FB

And I told Fleda,

No, I guess I do not consider the bathroom a private sanctuary. I experienced a spinal cord injury in 1991. I have thankfully recovered a great deal of independence but since this time I have come to think of my bathroom as 1. a place I'd rather not be and 2. a place of public domain. I think this is why I am so interested in this piece.

p.s.

I have been placed upon a bedpan and forgotten (accidentally) for the duration of one night shift, had to pull a string triggering a loud bleeping light to alert a floor full people the completion of my toileting activities, had unmentionable things done to my unmentionable parts to make me toilet for an audience (young residents); to this day I still get to spend what feels like an inordinate amount of time in the restroom. I do not have an intrinsic sense of a bathroom being a private sanctuary.

...see now I think you’re crazy, lady!

No reply.

Dear Fleda,

I guess we will have to agree to disagree and let time clear away the muddy waters of this correspondence.

Your friend,

Amanda ("Still Fascinated by the Garbage Disposal")

*1.7yrs. is made up.