Oh, there you are!

CC mentioned to me on our way in to work the other day that I needed to put a post up explaining myself and my absence. As if somehow I were unaware that I haven’t posted on this blog, Facebook and Twitter for like three weeks now.

He said I needed to let the people who follow my blog know what’s going on. Apparently both of you are worried about me.

So here’s a story:

I go in to the city early one day to hit a yoga class before work. I drop my bags at my work area and go into the bathroom. Remember that I work in a theater.

The bathroom is in the basement and is, as my sister would call it, a one-butt bathroom. I d0 what I need to do, wash up and go to leave. I grab the doorknob, pop the lock and turn.

The doorknob spins in my hand. Loosely. Ineffectively. I would go so far as to call it impotent and flaccid, even though it’s a doorknob. The doorknob isn’t doing a goddamn thing. The door is still closed, and, somehow, still locked, even with a freely spinning doorknob.

Okay, I think, no biggie. I’ve been locked in far worse bathrooms than this. Plus, I’m a stagehand. Oh, wait. All my tools are at my work area. Not in here with me. As is my cell phone. Crap.

So I dig around the bathroom and find. . . a roll of paper towels. That’s it. No pipe wrench. No random screwdriver. Not even a goddamn plunger.

I start yelling and banging on the door to try to get someone’s attention, because people are actually in the building even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. The only thing is that I’m in the basement. They’re on stage, rehearsing. Far, far away.

I may as well be on the moon.

And suddenly I’m pissed, you know? I get dinner made early, I arrange a babysitter early, I pay extra for early parking all to come in early and take this goddamn yoga class and now I’m stuck in the frickin’ bathroom? Are you kidding me?

I’ll be damned if some doorknob is going to steal my peace.

So I start kicking the crap out of the doorknob. It takes a little while, but eventually the doorframe bends, the knob breaks off and I am free and I have exactly five minutes to haul ass down 8th avenue to get to my yoga class.

I drop the pieces of the doorknob off at the stage door on my way out and tell our doorman, Gus, what happened, apologizing as sincerely and as fast as I can.

I make my yoga class.

When I come back I have to endure a rash of crap from lots of people for breaking the bathroom door and leaving.

House Head Carpenter: I don’t get it. I don’t understand how you were locked in. The doorknob still works.

Me: But it came off! Completely! That’s how I got out.

House Head Carpenter: The door’s bent now where you kicked it, but nothing’s wrong with the doorknob. Even though it broke off.

Me: Dude. I don’t know what to tell you. I was locked the hell in. For like twenty minutes.

House Head Carpenter: I’ll replace it, I’m just saying it still works. Don’t kick me.

None of this has anything to do with my absence from all things social media. But it does explain these:

The old doorknob is still on the door and sometimes I forget and try to lock it instead of using the latch.

Don’t let anybody steal your peace.

Ummm. . .

Sometimes the kids will say things that deeply resonate with me:

#5: I really want to climb the walls. Can I climb the walls?

I totally get that. Often, I want to climb the walls. So I let him. I should clarify that by “walls” he means “doorframe”, which has handy grabby bits around the edges, plus leverage, especially when you’re very bendy and lightweight and about four feet tall. When he comes to me and says this I let him “climb the walls” three times. He usually does two right away and then saves one for later, unless one of his sisters grabs him and pulls him down in the middle of a climb because they want to get into the refrigerator or else just torment him because really, if they wanted to get into the refrigerator they could just go through the other doorway.

If you’re ever at my house and you notice dirty footprints on the top of the doorway into the kitchen, this is why.

Sometimes the kids will say things and it makes me wonder what goes on in their heads:

#5: (explaining his graphing math homework to me, which involved solving a problem and then plotting the answer number and its opposite on a line) I don’t like to think of them as opposites. I prefer to refer to them as evil twins.

Oh yeah, positive, negative. Evil twins would totally make math more interesting. I wish I’d thought of it.

Then sometimes they say things that make me glad I don’t know what goes on in their heads. Or in their private time, behind closed doors.

#5: Do you think dogs’ hands taste better than their feet, like ours do?

Ummm. . .

Yours, Mine, and Ours

I’m lucky enough to belong to two great writing groups, one of which meets in New York every week.

We meet in a Public Space near Julliard close to Lincoln Center. I had never heard of a Public Space- spoken of in capital letters- before I met these excellent people. A Public Space is a place where you have the right, just by being a member of the public, to be there. Seems like a no-brainer, but it’s something of a big deal here. They don’t kick you out because you’re taking too long to finish your cappuccino or someone else wants your table; they only kick you out for being seriously annoying and/or dangerous, in which case the cops do the kicking. Not that I would know about that.

At the Public Space in which we meet there is a Public Restroom. These are rare and highly valued in New York. One of the reasons I’m not revealing the exact location is so that you don’t show up and I have to wait to use the restroom because you got there ahead of me. I live in Jersey. We don’t play nice.

There are actually two public restrooms in this Space, but one of them has no door handle and while you would think you would just be able to push the door open and go in, you can’t. I have no idea how to open the door. I’m not writing about that one.

I’m writing about the other one.

I had to be sneaky to get these pictures. Every corner of this building is under surveillance, and authorities here don’t take too kindly to people taking pictures of the insides of buildings.

A Unisex bathroom. I’m down with that. Except. . . it has multiple stalls. Huh.

Even though the door goes all the way to the floor, it’s weird.

Because girls go here…

seatup — you are totally allowed to leave the seat up

And so do boys.

It got me thinking. Somehow there’s a very European feel to this restroom. I base that on absolutely nothing, because the only two places I’ve ever been to in Europe are London and Berlin. While I did have a unique restroom experience in Berlin which you can read about here, that restroom looked nothing like this restroom, with its instructions on how to flush:

And how to panic:

(Here’s the panic button. You can’t miss it)

My natural inclination, upon walking out of a stall and running into a member of the opposite sex in a public restroom, is to panic. However, to date, I have restrained myself from hitting the panic button. It’s poor form.

Have you ever run across multi-stall unisex restrooms? If so, where? Is it weird, or is that just me?