Culture

A Heartfelt Rant About The Extremely Real Terror Of Public Toilets

Toilet anxiety is real and it shits me.

by Nina Oyama  12 December 2018
public toilet anxiety

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Welcome to Junkee’s most pure column: Heartfelt Rants About Extremely Petty Gripes, where very funny people get mildly peeved about something stupid, such as the concept of public toilet anxiety.

If you’re human whose digestive system is doing its damn job, you probably go to the toilet a couple of times a day. If you’re a human whose digestive system sometimes takes the day off — STOP READING THIS ARTICLE AND GO TO THE DOCTOR! What is wrong with you!?

If you’re not a human and your digestive system is doing its job, that’s great, this article isn’t for you either — unless you’re one of those cats who has been trained to use the bathroom like a person — in which case, that’s very impressive.

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But not as impressive as the fact that YOU are a CAT who can READ! Do you know how much money you could be making right now? I imagine there are heaps of jobs for literate cats — you could write think pieces about where it is that you go when your owner isn’t around, you could fact check every Garfield comic and Stephen Sondheim musical.

I mean, obviously the opinion of one cat isn’t indicative of the perspective of every cat, but humans paint cats with a pretty broad brush, and being a voice for the feline community could definitely be lucrative. Go get that shmoney my pussy dude, and treat yourself to a lifetime supply milk or Whiskers or whatever it is that you Cool Cats are into nowadays. Scram!

Anyway, now that I’ve filtered through to my target demographic, my heartfelt rant is about pooping in public toilets. I hate it. I hate it so much.

Toilet anxiety is real and it shits me (figuratively), but it also stops me from shitting (literally) — a paradox which makes me absolutely bloody furious.

Toilet Anxiety Affects Millions Of Australians Every Day

You’re probably reading this and thinking “oh great — another comedian doing base level, low brow toilet humour.”

No. That is where you are wrong. This is plain anger: pure toilet rage.

Honestly, I am having a nervous breakdown just writing about it.

Public toilets are the scourge of our society, inflicting new, horrible anxieties upon me every day. While it is common knowledge that everyone excretes, in my mind it is the universal truth that PEOPLE WHO DO POOS DO NOT DESERVE LOVE AND SHOULD BE BANISHED TO LIVE IN THE WOODS LIKE THE FILTHY ANIMALS THEY ARE.

Okay, maybe that’s not the actual truth, but that is how I feel every time I use a public toilet to make brown bears.

You should also know that I apply this theory specifically to myself and no one else. If other people shit, that’s FINE. However, when I myself do it, I’m committing an eternal sin that should damn me to a porcelain hell.

Seriously, if I was Botticelli painting Dante’s Inferno, it would just be several circles of fire-demons laughing at my constipated ass failing to even get a turtle head going. Side note: I would also call myself Potty-celli, because you know, word play is vaguely hilarious to some people (mostly Dads), and I need all the validation I can get.

My fear of crapping in public is particularly heightened if the toilets are:

  1. In a workplace
  2. In a bar or café
  3. At the park
  4. At someone else’s house
  5. LITERALLY ANYWHERE

I Wish I Never Had To Poop

The worst thing is when people use the toilet to do their make up.

Like, that’s basically just a personal attack, a real punch in my dropped guts.  Not only does it make me want to climb into the loo and flush myself down to the sewer along with my faecal abominations, but it’s also bad for the make-up applier’s health.

Like, I just can’t go when I know there’s a person out there putting on mascara in silence…listening, waiting to JUDGE ME for having normal bodily functions. Not to mention that in the bathroom, teensy tiny microscopic particles float through their air and can go into your eyeliner and give you pink eye.

If anything, the reason I can’t go is because I am to TOO CONSIDERATE and CONCERNED FOR THE HEALTH OF OTHERS. Just kidding — it is because I am deeply deeply ashamed of my stools.

Stop Judging Me

The most utterly humiliating part is coming out of a stall at the same time as somebody else, and you have to humbly keep your head bowed and not make eye contact because you know they KNOW what you did.

Maybe they recorded the splishy-splashy sounds from your anus and will use it for blackmail later on in your life. You have to think about these things. People are psychos.

One time when I was hungover, I accidentally shit my pants in an empty park, and it was far less embarrassing than any time I have faced someone aware of the atrocities I’d committed in a nearby cubicle. Honestly now that I think about it, maybe if I look into getting park diarrhoea permanently then all my problems would go away.

The only good thing about toilet anxiety is I know I’m not the only person who suffers from it.

I went to university in a regional town, where kids who lived in dormitories would leave on weekends, driving 4 hours back to the city to take a weeks’ worth of dumps at their family home where they felt truly comfortable.

There was an urban legend that one guy held it in for two months and had to go to hospital. That guy was me. Okay, no he WASN’T and I’m not even sure he is real, but the story does make me feel better about my current situation.

If you, like me, are one of these people who think they are a yucky disgusting gross poop monster, you’re not wrong. You completely are.

But you know what’s more disgusting? People who LOVE shitting in public. That’s WAY creepier, so I guess in the scheme of things, we’re all doing fine.

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Nina Oyama is a writer and comedian, who has appeared on Utopia, The Angus Project and Tonightly.