private party

I noticed this first in Europe, but it holds true here, too, for the most part:  the showers are significantly less secluded than in America.  Their surrounds are see-through, and they haven't got shower curtains.  I know, it's rare that you'd be doubling up in the bathroom and need a great deal of privacy providing the door's already closed, but, I don't know, I guess it's the principle of the thing.  Either that or we're a bit more used to dorm life and the need for such shelterings.

It all came up at a party I had on Friday.  I'd mentioned near the outset that, having not gotten around to cleaning my ensuite bathroom yet, the hordes could make their way to the main bathroom and only the main bathroom, should the need arise.

Now you may say that it was very wrong of me not to clean my ensuite bathroom before the evening's festivities and you may very well be right.  I'd meant to, but.  Yeah, it just didn't happen.  My best defense is that it's genetic.  The very same thing once happened to my mother.  She'd had a goodbye party for a friend at our house, when all three of us were rather young and prone to make the bathroom into a place of profound disarray.  And she'd managed to clean the entire downstairs, bathroom included, and thought that'd be sufficient and that no one would venture upstairs.  It wasn't until the end of the evening when she learned that one guest had, one by one, taken every other guest at the party upstairs to the uncleaned bathroom in order to secretly write on a going-away t-shirt for the guest of honor.  She always cleaned all our bathrooms after that.

In any event, several hours later at my party the need arose and someone ventured off to find what I'd described as the "second door you'll encounter."  (There's a corner.  It's a bit hard to genuinely call it the second on the right, seeing as it's straight ahead of you.  But you don't want to say "the one straight ahead," in case they get turned around.  It's a bit of a conundrum really.  Similarly I have a hard time giving directions to my flat.  Generally I just tell people to look for the "orbs of light" and leave them to figure the rest on their own from there.  Seems to work.  Most of the time.)  Unfortunately, behind the second encountered door was the sound of running water.  It seems my flatmate was taking a bath.

Which led us all into a huge discussion of appropriate bathroom contexts.  We were clear from the outset that the guest, a male my flatmate had only just met, would not be welcome to barge in for, well, any reason short possibly of announcing an imminent fire, though even then we were pretty sure he could just pound and yell, "FIRE!"  However, it emerged that there could be gray areas in terms of bathroom protocol.

I'd helpfully pointed out that the lack of privacy thing made it all rather difficult in these gray areas.  Americans, should the need arise, can, on occasion, with very close friends or roommates, pop into a bathroom to, say, grab a brush while someone else is in the shower.  Curtain closed, no dramas.

With clear showerings, though (or even none, as I've occasionally seen), this is a bit less kosher.  Perhaps Australians are simply more patient than Americans.  Or amazingly less uninhibited.

The Australians present also pointed out that, actually, the bathroom and the toilet can be two different rooms entirely, and calling it the bathroom can be a bit misleading.  I understood their dilemma, but insisted that, by American standards, a euphemism was absolutely necessary.  It's a bathroom or a restroom regardless of what's happening inside.  Period.

I started to think a bit more, and determined, that, while it could be permissible at some times to double up in a bathroom while one party was in the shower, it was an entirely different matter if the toilet was in question, unless possibly one were throwing up in it.  Otherwise, anyone fully toilet trained should never find themselves in the situation of needing it desperately enough to encroach on another's in-bathroom privacy, end of story.

But what of the story at my flat?  How did it end, you ask?  Well, having been scared off by my previous insistence that guests use only the main facility, the guest, despite my remorseful re-insistence that, really, it was okay to use if you could just ignore the two bags of trash that were sitting on the floor waiting to go out, nobly insisted that waiting was by far the best option.

Two rounds of scattegories later, I'm still not sure if he ever made it.  But it would have been a private trip, positively.