my french revolution

I recently found myself involved in a revolution…a failed revolution but one nevertheless. I find it very fitting to be involved in one while living here in France, perhaps it will add to the “frenchness” of my experience.

My mini-revolution is one that all women, whether they would openly admit it or not, have thought about starting at one time or another in their lives. The first time I can remember contemplating such violence was at a baseball game during the seventh-inning-stretch when the line for the women’s restroom stretched down the corridor while the men seemed to come and go effortlessly. There seems to be some fault in modern architecture, or perhaps a conspiracy of male designers who are determined to continually short change women. Why is it that the men’s and women’s restrooms are made the same size when the demand is clearly not the same?

To fully understand my participation in this failed revolution we must first delve into the French and American psyches and explore some very important cultural differences. With three small children I pride myself on my ability to locate a bathroom in almost any major department store in the US. I can locate a McDonalds or gas station bathroom within 3 minutes of hearing the words “I gotta go potty” uttered from the back seat of the mini-van. But all this has changed dramatically since we moved to France. What was a sense of security in knowing I was surrounded by restrooms has become a constant terror that I will have to let my son (much to his great pleasure) urinate on the sidewalk (or on the subway platform) because there is no public restroom within a 10 kilometer radius.

The lack of public facilities has been a great topic of discussion between me and my husband. It is remarkable to us that a socialist country, which provides free healthcare and gives three years of maternity leave, would not take into account the everyday physical needs of its citizens. At first we philosophized that perhaps it was because America is much more comfort oriented. As Americans we like our shopping aisles to be wide, the colors to be bright, the store to be clean, the neighborhood to be well kept, our cars to remain untouched in the parking lot, and the products we buy to work. We like to be comfortable where ever we are. The French don’t seem to have this cultural trait. They can walk into a grocery store and not expect to get everything on their list. Pity the poor produce manager in the US who decided not to stock bananas for three consecutives days. He would be treated to a tirade by every self respecting soccer Mom in the US. The French can walk down filthy sidewalks and still enjoy the beauty of the day, while my kids can’t seem to get their eyes off the dog poop as they walk to school making gagging noises the whole way. The French actually use the bumpers on their cars; they are very useful in making an extra six inches of parking space in an otherwise cramped spot. So maybe the whole bathroom issue is because the French don’t feel entitled, as Americans do, to have everything clean, orderly, comfortable, available and working properly. This great philosophical discovery may sound wonderful and might encourage us to look beyond our somewhat spoiled American culture; but it is unfortunately, not at the root of the bathroom issue.

The simple truth to the great mystery of why the French don’t have bathrooms around every corner is because they don’t drink anything! There are no “Big Gulps” here, no “Super Sized” 36 ounce drinks, even their coffee cups are about ¼ the size of American ones. (As an aside for all you coffee lovers out there, the French call our coffee “dirty sock water”). In the US we drink liquids as a pastime; we grab a 20 ounce coke while we stroll the extra wide aisles of Super Target, my mini-van had 8 cup holders, even my stroller has 3 cup holders! The French have the same approach to drinking liquids as they do to eating I think. You don’t just grab a coke and drink it on the bus or in your car here, you pay $5 for a bottled coke and you sit in the outdoor café and nurse it along for about an hour. Will is convinced that French mothers start training their kids from an early age allowing them only 4 oz of juice at each meal, whereas we used to buy juice 6 gallons at a time. I think that the French must be world leaders in bladder control, which explains their lack of public facilities. Their concessions to those less with less sophisticated control, (i.e. poor tourists and newly arrived ex-pats who are wading through the plethora of new French gastro-intestinal bugs) are the free “Turkish Toilets” and the few pay toilets that randomly dot the cities.

The Turkish Toilets are free because the French know that you could never get anyone to pay for such a horrific experience. Eli fondly refers to them as “Squatty Potties” and starts screaming if he is led toward one. When I first used these free toilets (out of sheer desperation) I thought I had stumbled into some sort of free shower for the homeless. The toilets are merely shower-like stalls with a drain in the floor and two slippery porcelain places to put your feet. Flushing consists of a high pressured gush of water that is randomly aimed all over the floor and it is important to remember to jump clear as soon as you push the button or you will find yourself rather moist from the knees down. While these facilities are a shock to the delicate American sensibilities they do have an upside. When faced with the dilemma of how to support oneself while using these facilities you quickly find that you have remarkable thigh strength and stamina. Suzanne Summers beware! The Turkish Toilet workout is 10 times more effective than the Thigh Master.

When compared to the alternatives, the pay toilets look like paradise to a drowning tourist or a desperate sufferer, but beware, dangers lurk in these oddly shaped metal walls. First there is the problem of payment; this is made more exasperating because all the French coins seem to be about the same size and each toilet I have visited seems to exact a different toll and require payment in different ways. The process of selecting the correct coins and finding the right way to pay the monolith machine is complicated by the urgency of the situation one finds oneself in by the time one finds one of these machines. I am sure that once Sarkozy is securely installed as President and his more ‘capitalistic’ and ‘American’ policies are in place, these machines will take credit and debit cards. The second hurdle is the style of toilet. This too seems to vary from region to region. Fortunately, all the pay toilets I have seen seem to provide at least some sort of basin (usually not a seat though, sorry ladies) so at least you are spared the rigors of squatting. Once you figure out which is the toilet and which is the sink (I always find it hard to distinguish between the two) be prepared because there is never toilet paper, or soap for that matter. The most important thing to remember in using these facilities, however, is that you are being timed. The door will automatically open after several minutes, whenever your payment has expired I presume. Also at some regular interval (I have never actually stuck around long enough to discover the exact length of time) the entire inside of these oddly shaped huts is automatically washed down with some sort of blue cleanser. Before I leave France I want to spend all day waiting outside one of these things to see if anyone comes out a soggy blue.

So now that we have explored the history of the public restroom in France we can get on with my failed revolution. I was recently at the opera, an opera that would not end…two hours into it we were finally granted a 15 minute respite and of course, all 1000 women rushed to one of only two bathrooms. What made the situation even more frustrating was that the French don’t know how to stand in line, and so there was just a random mass of women hovering outside of the bathroom. After waiting with my British friend in this mass for 10 minutes we began to feel the urgency of our situation. With only 5 minutes remaining in our entr’acte, this was the time for action. There was a stir of activity farther up in the ‘line’ and what looked like a large portion of the women still waiting mounted a revolt and walked into the neighboring men’s restroom (which of course did not have a line). Feeling bolstered by my British friend’s “European-ness”, I followed her into the men’s room. I felt as all revolutionaries must at the moment of action; after waiting in frustration and torment, the moment had finally come for resolution. I felt emboldened remembering all those wasted minutes of my life spent waiting in a line to use the restroom while watching the men snicker or look sympathetically at the line of desperate women as they strutted freely in and out of their male-only sanctum. This was payback time!

I felt sure that I was the only one with this overwhelming sense of satisfaction at this mini-revolt. This is Europe, where co-ed bathrooms are common from five star restaurants to busy train stations. I was sure that this sort of rebellion was nothing special to these other, bolder women. But for me this was all new. I was finally shrugging off my American prudishness to experience liberté, égalité and fraternité. I was finally snubbing my nose at all those men who had ever snickered, the men who could just go use a tree while camping, the men who didn’t miss the second act because they didn’t have to wait in line, the men who say “what took you so long?”. I took a deep breath, feeling my courage rise and my heart swell with this newfound liberation, and pushed open the men’s room door.

As soon as the door closed behind me, regret, like a striking serpent, snatched the courage from me in a flash. What had seemed to be vast numbers of women united in equality turned out to be only two other women other than my friend and myself. We stood there, the four of us, in a line of our own making. There were only two stalls, and so we must again, wait. I found myself at the back of this little line of freedom fighters too terrified to lift my eyes from the hem of my friends dress. I studied closely the intricacy of its design and stitching as the line slowly crept forward and one by one the other women were finally able to use the bathroom and exit this chamber of disappointment. All this time men kept coming and going. They would open the door and stop for a moment, slightly bewildered to see a line of women in the men’s room, but then they would simply bypass us for the convenience of the urinals. For all my ideas of payback and justice, here I was in this male sanctum still being passed by, snubbed and snickered at. Suddenly my focal point was gone, my friend was gone, it was her turn in line and I was standing there…alone in a men’s room. In a meager attempt to maintain my dignity, I tired to hold my head high, but in doing so I suddenly became aware that I was standing right next to a bank of urinals…all of which were being used. The next thirty seconds were the longest of my entire lifetime. Standing there frozen between evolutionary instincts: run for your life, wait to use the bathroom … run, wait … run, wait.

The gratitude I felt when my friend opened the door of her stall cannot even begin to be expressed in writing. I nearly plowed my friend down as she was leaving the stall in my desperation for a few moments of invisibility within its four tiny metal walls. My hands were shaking, my cheeks were a lovely shade of purple, but finally I was invisible. I gulped down air like a drowning person trying to calm myself. The one glorious consolation in all of this, the one moment when I felt that God was still watching me even here in a French men’s room, was when I realized I had drawn the handicapped stall which had its own sink. This meant I could wash my hands in the safety of the stall and then with only one big effort make a mad dash for the door. I began to relax a little and do what I came here to do. I was beginning to feel more like myself and start to see the humor in my situation when the world suddenly fell out from under me. The handle of the stall was turning, someone was trying to get in; a MAN was trying to get in. I flung myself at the door with the force of a 300 pound down lineman, pinning it closed with my shoulder. “Un Moment” I rasped, trying to make my voice sound more masculine. I stood there shaking, unable to move, shackled by the nylons around my ankles. Quickly I pulled myself together, washed my hands and braced for the longest sprint of my life.

I prepared myself for what was to come, imagining the ten feet from the stall to the door, taking deep breaths and visualizing freedom. I swung open the door so fast that I frightened the poor man who was waiting outside, his shock only growing when he realized I was a woman. I raced passed the urinals with my eyes fixed forward, I reached for the door… but the handle was gone. In my sprint I nearly ran over a man who was just opening the door from the outside. Loosing precious time, I was forced to make way for him as he entered the men’s room. He looked at me and cocked his head to one side; he stood between me and my freedom. If he had stood there one more second he would have felt the full force of an embarrassed woman flatten him to the ground. Instead, in an act of ingrained chivalry he reached out and opened the door to freedom for me. Giving me a slight bow he said “Excusé moi, madame.” I darted through the door and gasped for air as if I had just come up from the depths of the ocean. I found my friend and we dashed back to our seats as they were sounding the last call for the entr’acte, anxious to leave our experience, and any men who might recognize us from the restroom, far behind. I fell into my seat next to my husband just as the lights were going down for the next act.

It was of course impossible for me to concentrate on the final acts of the opera. As the heroine lay tragically dying on the stage it was all I could do to keep from giggling as the humor of my earlier experience finally caught up with me. Needless to say that the drama of my episode in the men’s room far exceeded that of the opera, and an already tepid performance on the stage was overshadowed by my own comedy during the intermission.

I suppose there must be a moral in this story somewhere. Perhaps it is never drink too much at dinner before a 4 hour opera. Perhaps it is simply never drink while in France. Perhaps it is never join a revolution until you are exactly sure how many people are on your side. I think however that my story is a reminder to all women who have ever waited in line for the bathroom. No matter how desperate you are, no matter how much of the play you will miss, no matter how many others you think will follow you in, the men’s room is no place for a lady, but you might just find a gentleman there.