The moment I walk through the door, I can sense something is awry in the gents toilets.
I know this thanks to years of hard-won experience. Every man of my generation was expected to learn the skill of navigating a pub toilet successfully.
Perhaps the trend to gender nonconformity and unisex toilets will one day render such knowledge redundant. It will be an archaic skill, like setting a snare trap, or working out why a CD is skipping. But for now, I cling to the Old Ways.
Successfully navigating the gents is all about peripheral vision. One checks for hazards without accidentally checking someone’s junk. One avoids eye contact, and lingers not a moment too long.
Over time, one develops a ‘spidey sense’ that activates in the presence of anyone who flouts these unspoken protocols, who wants to make conversation at the stalls or at the sinks. This is usually a weird, slurred conversation, laden with non-sequiturs.
On the night in question, my spidey sense goes off the moment that I enter the men’s lavatory of a London chain pub.
There’s only one other guy in there, besides me. He’s at the sink with his back to me, and although I don’t lock eyes on him for more than a fraction of a second, his posture instantly telegraphs that something is amiss.
The men’s room is large enough that there’s a partition wall between the sink and the stalls. I round the corner to the urinal.
Evasive action
Now, I’ve made substantial improvements over the years, but avoiding dubious drunks was a skill I learned the hard way. In my youth, I somehow managed to single myself out for attention from sociopathic patrons.
I can remember several occasions when some crazy guy at a pub or club would single me out as his arbitrary target. He’d conjure up a weird, imagined slight against his character, or that of a relative who wasn’t even present.
He had an aura of menace
that surrounded him unceasingly like dry ice
Over time, my spidey sense improved, as did my ability to fade into the background.
On one occasion I was out for Christmas drinks when I found myself introduced to a guy we’ll call ‘Tommy’.
Tommy had an aura of fidgety menace that condensed unceasingly around him like dry ice. After a couple of minutes of small talk (mainly focused on recent personal injustices he’d endured) I made my excuses and vowed to keep as far from him as possible.
A few hours later, Tommy was being escorted from the premises by a bouncer, whom he obligingly headbutted on the way out.
Now, I doubt this guy in the pub toilet is going to be the next Tommy, but there’s something undeniably furtive about him. As I round the corner he’s still standing there, staring fixedly at the sink.
An unfortunate misunderstanding
I start to wash my hands, having quickly surmised what discussion we’re about to have.
After a few awkward seconds, he pipes up.
“Mate, mate – is this the urinal!?”
I reply politely that this is, in fact, the sink.
“But mate it looks just like a urinal!” he protests, jovially.
I note that, while there is a structural similarity – they are both long metal troughs affixed to the walls of a pub toilet – the presence of built-in taps and soap dispensers offers us strong empirical evidence that this is not the urinal.
“Oh mate” – here it comes – “I’ve just taken a piss in it! Oh no!”
Now, it doesn’t seem totally implausible that someone could be drunk enough to mistake this sink for a urinal.
One scenario: it’s the 1960s and you’ve spent all day in the company of Peter O’Toole, and it’s his birthday. But it’s a Monday night before 11pm, and he’s still sober enough to hold an entirely coherent conversation with me.
He’s been waiting here by the urinal in the hope that someone will drop by
He chuckles as though we’re both in on the joke – this totally organic joke – clearly presupposing that, by this stage, I’ll be shaking my head with mirthful bemusement.
This bloke is so off his nut that he thought it was a urinal! Legend.
The inconvenient truth is that he’s been waiting here, by the sink, in the hope that someone will drop by.
Otherwise, he’d be forced to return to his mates and give them a more contrived account of things: that he was pissed enough to make the mistake but also sober enough to realise his mistake before he left the toilet. Pretty weak sauce for a night out.
He needs me to launder the prank – to give plausible deniability and authenticity to his antics. Without me as his dupe, there’s no story to report.
Have a good time, all the time
This encounter reminds me of the level of effort that used to be required during my twenties to engineer some excitement on a night out. On every night out. In that bygone age of binge drinking, this kind of nonsense was basically as compulsory as a round of Stella.
The truth is that you can’t force a good time, although I’ve watched enough people try over the years.
My new acquaintance continues to commit to the bit – he can’t believe what he’s just done – and I remain diplomatic. I’m not indulging this little bit of Lad’s Night Theatre but also won’t risk making a stranger feel like a dickhead.
He doesn’t seem the headbutt-a-bouncer sort, but neither does it seem gentlemanly to call out his behaviour as I leave the facilities.
As for hygiene, I was a good half metre away from him, and the sink wasn’t plugged, so there was no danger of cross-contamination. After a suitable pause, I let a member of staff know that they might want to pour some disinfectant when they have a spare moment.
Of course, that’s assuming he even pissed in the sink in the first place. Maybe he didn’t.
Still, it makes a good story, right?
