Interrupting the Flow

The walls are lined with pale tiles. They aren't exactly white, more like teeth that only get brushed periodically white, a very soft yellow. I'd say mother of pearl, but every time I hear someone say that I think about that movie Little Giants with Rick Moranis and Rick Moranis depresses me. There's a crack winding its way through the grout that holds the off-white tiles in place. At eye-level the crack crosses the grout and splinters into the ceramic squares. It looks like someone has bashed their head into the wall here. I imagine something like that would have been messy. There's an advertisement for a truck just below where the crack starts. I look at it, but I don't really read it. There's no half-naked woman sitting on top of the black truck so my attention starts to wane in a matter of seconds. Yet, I stare at the shapes of the letters, big and blocky, a stark white against the black background, the colour that the tiles framing it can only aspire to now. I feel tense for a few seconds, but like always, it unexplainably disappears and the release comes. For some reason it reminds me of natural light and Chinooks in the summer time. It's just soothing. I let myself smile.

How's it going man?

I try my best to pretend that the voice is directed at someone else who might be staring at the wall, but there are only two of us in here. There's a part of me that is compelled to answer. It feels like an obsessive compulsion, like people who have to wash their hands eighty-seven times before they can leave their house. It's redundant to have a conversation here and further more extremely uncomfortable, yet there's that unreasonable little voice in my head, and its resemblance to my mother is chilling, telling me to speak when spoken too. Maybe like the nag in an OCD'd head that keeps telling it's owner that there are still germs in between their fingers.
But there's another part of me that is disturbed and even insulted. This part of my head demands a privacy that our society has conditioned us into. I'm in a private space, and the only voices I should be hearing are the ones inside my head. The one's that tell me to kill people like this. I'm joking, the voices in my head mostly just talk about the weather. It's not what most people think, that conversation is stunted here because of homophobia. It's not like that at all. There's a vulnerability in the situation that makes conversing with strangers awkward. It's a vulnerability that I would like to dismiss as soon as possible and therefore I must fully concentrate on the task at hand (no pun intended).

Having a good time man? Nice shirt.

I try to ignore him. First of all there's no really good answer to the question. I'd have a better time if I was back upstairs, drinking beer with my friends, trying to talk to girls that are too pretty to listen and not yet drunk enough to dismiss such a crucial fact. I take my beer off of the top of the urinal and take a drink. It's cold, it's tasty, and it gives me an excuse not to talk. Nice shirt? Who says that in a bathroom. I can feel his eyes on the side of my head. He's staring at me. This is worse than not talking.

I'm doing alright man. Thank You.

His head turns around mercifully and I feel the tension start to slip away again. I have a shy bladder. Finally, the flow simpers, and after a few shakes I step down from the urinal. I tuck in and go directly to the sink. Under the circumstances I feel that I can ignore the custom of buttoning and zipping at the urinal. I give my hands a rinse, (after all I didn't pee on them), and take the last sheet of paper towel. I wrap it around my hand and open the bathroom door. I hear him as I leave.

Right on, right on.

No. Not really.