Travels with Penny: True Tales of a Gay Guy and His Mother by David Alan Morrison

Author:David Alan Morrison [Morrison, David Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Booktrope
Published: 2015-04-08T07:00:00+00:00

* * *

“I still can’t get over those bathrooms,” Mom said as we boarded the shuttle back to the town. “It reminds me of camping.”

“What’s with you and bathrooms?” I sat watching the tour guide pointing to various attractions along the road as the bus bounced along the uneven road. In one tour alone, I heard that woman speak in German, French and broken English, moving between them with more ease than most of my students use their native tongue. I marvel at how lucky the Europeans are; they live in an area where the countries are so closely knit together that they can pick up another’s dialect as easily as we change the channels on the remote. My last attempt at a spoken language was in high school with a teacher I affectionately referred to as Frau Cow. An obese woman, she carried herself with all the grace of the love child of a Sumo Wrestler and Nurse Ratched.

“Well, haven’t you noticed how it costs to get into the bathrooms over here?” she asked. How could I not? I live in Seattle. We drink more coffee than water. We drink so much coffee, we fund the entire South American coffee export industry. I would sooner go broke on this trip paying to use the toilet than buying souvenirs.

“I don’t mind paying for toilets here. The restrooms are really clean.” She nodded her head to emphasize how clean they were. “You could eat off the floors.”

“That’s a bad visual picture, Ma.” Some mental pictures should stay undeveloped on the darkroom floor.

“I mean, after anyone goes and does their business, some person goes in there and tidies it up. Don’t they do that in the men’s room?”

I don’t remember these kind of things. With all due respect to Senator Larry Craig, I don’t usually hang out in public bathrooms. Taking a photojournalistic tour of the men’s room never figures into my travel plans.

“Well, in the women’s they do,” she said. “I don’t mind paying to go if someone’s going to keep it clean. It keeps someone in a job. You have to admit taking money for the restroom is better than being out of work or living on welfare. I have to hand it to them—I don’t want to clean my own bathroom. Why should I want to clean someone else’s?”

She had a point. I have a friend who gets her house cleaned monthly, mainly because she doesn’t want to clean her shower. I’ve asked her why she just didn’t do it herself and save the money. A shower is a shower. It’s not like a truck wash or a maternity ward where you have to deal with oil, grease or afterbirth.

“It’s just gross,” she told me.

“So’s wiping your ass, but you have to do that, too.”

She threw something at me—keys I think. “You’re just sick.”

“When I was growing up, we had pay toilets,” Mom said. “I always thought it was a rip-off. But here, you get something for your money.”

“Isn’t the privilege to pee enough of a reward?”

“Funny,” she chastised.

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