Men's Room Graffito

Writin' in the Boys Room

Because bathroom stalls are a tiny private islands within the public space and time, men seize the opportunity to express themselves anonymously and occasionally write very funny or startling things. Mostly, though, it's crudely sexual and/or bigoted. Women probably do, too, but I wouldn't know that firsthand. That's another interesting facet: restroom graffiti is writing for a gender-segregated audience.

When I was in college, I went on field trip with a professor and a few students to a mining cabin in Death Valley. The property was owned by the university and was for research use by the faculty. Mostly it was used by the geology department, but my professor could find no reason why it couldn't be used by our narrative writing class. The cabin was next to an abandoned talc mine. The women in our group, including my professor, were transfixed and horrified by the graffiti we found in the mine shaft. They were shocked by the buxom drawings of naked female torsos and the awkward, misspelled desires scrawled there. I didn't have the heart to tell them that they could have seen the same thing written in the men's rooms of buildings they occupied on a daily basis.

I never write graffiti, but I do confess to being an occasional editor. While others use the time to vent their rage or pain at the world, I use it to indulge myself in the smartypants glee of making small corrections to their grammar, spelling, or logic. I'm not the only one. Some entries are heavily edited by the time nature calls to me.

Much of the graffiti I read are hoary chestnuts. Every man (and maybe every woman?) in America can finish this two line poem: "Now I sit here broken-hearted..." Occasionally, though, I will see something striking. Yesterday, while sitting in a stall at Elliot Bay Books, I read this on the back of the door:

To all those who ever wished me ill, tonight your dreams have come true.

How sad is that?