I would like to speak of the scandal of anonymous gay sex in public restrooms, as performed by certain and several public dignitaries, mostly Republican, entirely conservative. Though I have no bone to pick with gay men engaging in sex, anonymous or not, the notion of  it taking place in public restrooms does make me, and surely others, a little ill-at-ease.

Were a stray republican spermatozoan to wriggle its way into my sphincter, would I begin to appreciate the boorish cretinry of Lou Dobbs? This is not a risk I desire to take, every time I find myself needing to grunt out a deuce in a public facility.

I realize that the practice of converting public bathrooms into private bathhouses has been going on since the Romans invented the first public restroom in 69 A.D. Sitting down to a public toilet is not the most reassuring of actions a concientious and hygenic man can take. The reasons for this are so myriad and vile that most of us simply block them out of our heads entirely and attempt to use public facilities as infrequently as possible.

From intravenous drug use to anonymous sexual encounters to the actual bodily function that bathrooms are designed for, when it comes to public restrooms, we’d rather not consider past or future events and simply live in the present.

The problem is that restrooms serve a natural, everyday – if not wholly sanitary – purpose that is a necessity for every one of us. Because of this, we have all had to build up some kind of mental wall protecting us from our own thoughts about what may well have gone down only minutes ago in the very place where we find ourselves sitting, much in the same way that we keep ourselves from thinking about what goes on in the kitchen of a restaurant where we are eating
But then, after all this self-conditioning, we have had our precious mental walls shattered by the nightly news. As one Republican politician after another has been caught using public restrooms for their special, other purpose, one can’t help but think: has my local conservative representative or firebrand pastor been engaging in strange perversions right where I’m shitting now? Like with cockroaches, it’s not the handful you do see – it’s the countless hoard you don’t. We all know how uncomfortable such thoughts can be.

You may have thought that, thanks to a more accepting atmosphere concerning homosexuality, the days of lurid bathroom sex were coming to a close. Shouldn’t these secret trysts be rendered unnecessary now that gays are so much more free to be open about their sexuality?

Unfortunately, while many gays are flocking to California to get married or simply enjoying archetypal coupley activities, such as walks on the beach, candle-lit dinners, and hot oral sex, a certain sad breed of self-hating homosexual is keeping this trend of restroom sex alive, due to his need to maintain a bigoted public image.

Using their own self-loathing to fuel the fires of bigotry, these individuals repress themselves to a boiling point most people will fortunately never experience, until the pressure builds to a level where it explodes in an often meth-driven eruption of shame and lust, and they find themselves driven to search for anonymous sex at all costs, putting ther careers at risk as they solicit encounters in even the most heavily trafficked of bathrooms – say, for instance, the Minneapolis airport.

Now, most of you are probably thinking that this is clearly not hygenic for the rest of us, who are just there to drop the kids off at the pool. But what can we do? There doesn’t seem to be a way of getting around the fact that extremely repressed homosexuals of this conservative Christian ilk will always be lurking in our public restrooms, guiltily seeking the pleasures of the flesh. Our bathroom stalls will not be safe until we come up with a plan to deal with this issue. As repulsive as these individuals may be, we must make some sort of room for them in our society.

After all, two of the other nasty acts performed in public restrooms – intravenous drug use and taking a shit – are both often accounted for in the maintainance of the facilities. All of us have probably seen, and used, the seat covers provided in many a public lavatory to save our butts from the ass-residue left by the previous patron. Additionally, though less common and somewhat controversial, some establishments, such as the Tacoma Downtown Library have installed special sharps  disposal units inside their restroom stalls so that hypodermic syringes may be safely discarded.

Therefore, with these things in mind, I propose that special stalls be installed in public restrooms for the exclusive purpose of anonymous Republican homosexual encounters. A designating sign would let us know was being done and where, and we will have freed ourselves from one of the more frightening aspects of the wild world of public restrooms.