Public Toilets at the Times Square Subway Station

What was I thinking? Oh right, I was thinking "yah, they just redid them and there's attendants and it's bound to be alright at least..."

Picture this - 4 unisex stalls (everywhere in New York seemed to have a unisex stall, yuck) and a bunch of creepy men standing around, an attendant in a locked booth who really didn't care, and I'm in line, wondering what the hell I'm thinking, when a stall door opens and this big fat man comes out and holds the door open for me "Here ya go!" he announces and I start towards it. The toilet seat is most definitely up and there's "water" and paper all over the floor and the bowl is literally filled with crap-covered toilet paper. "That's fucking nasty" came out of my mouth before I could stop it and he says "Oh no! It's not that bad!" and waves his arms around trying to get the sensor to flush... I entered, grabbed a bunch of paper towel, pushed and wiped down the seat, and... squatted. Couldn't bring myself to sit. I squatted and closed my eyes and imagined I was in a field somewhere in Saskatchewan... no sitting, no wiping, no flushing, and most definitely no touching of anything. Fucking bladder. Curse you.

Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

I do think though that I'm going back in March. I shall spend my 31st birthday with free drinks at a pub in Manhattan (thank you Scott for somehow pulling that one off!) and a fancy-arse dinner (courtesy his workplace for some overtime he did a while back). Top it off with a burlesque show and I think I've got myself one heck of a birthday party. Anyone want to come with?

This picture above is another fine example of why I'm just not used to life in the big city anymore. The first morning we're at his apartment I went to go out for a cigarette. He lives on the 4th and top floor of an old apt building, and he had told me that I just needed to go one floor up to the roof to smoke. I had my moccasins on, and I naively asked if I needed to put shoes on or if my slippers would be ok. He says "oh, you should probably put shoes on, it's kind of gravely up there" so I slip on my boots with my PJ's and head upstairs. Pop open the door and promptly stumble upon 2 used condoms. And it just fucking shook me. I wasn't expecting it, I was kind of in camping mode or something where slippers and PJ's are quite fine for wandering around in. Well, you can't camp on a Brooklyn rooftop was the lesson for the day. It took me about 2 hrs to shake how freaked out that made me feel.

He has friends that are raising a 4 yr old daughter there. I can't even imagine it. They are good people, though. They took us walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with aboveforementioned daughter. What a trooper. And Lois is a freelance photographer, check out her lovely work at www.loisanshus.com.

Questions? Concerns? It was like a 2nd date, for all intents and purposes. A 3 day long 2nd date, but what the hell else are you going to do when you live 2000 miles apart?