Craven Community College (Part I)

Craven is a pretty weird community college.

Let me tell you why:

Part I: In Which Our Hero Takes A Bathroom Break

The bathrooms are the strangest place I have ever been. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode (props to Rod Serling, Binghamton, NY, native) where a guy has to pee, flings open the bathroom door and it’s all swirling specks of light and somebody is playing a theremin. One week, I had two weird things happen to me in bathrooms at Craven (no foot tapping or wide stances or anything) that’ve molded me into a bit of a community-college bathroom skeptic.

I drink a billion cups of coffee every morning. Literally. That being said, at 1130ish, nature demands I find a restroom. Scenario one took place in the upstairs bathroom of the Brock building. For those of you unfamiliar with the layout, upon entry you are staring at a line of three stalls and two urinals down one wall and a row of three sinks on the opposite wall (they usually don’t have soap - - don’t bother).

I walked in and a gentlemen (I assume) was using the middle stall. I was startled by how quickly he turned his head. He locked eyes with me. With passion. With an uncomfortable, fiery passion. As if I was some sort of moth that landed in his metaphorical spider web. I gave the “yeah, we’re both using the bathroom” nod and started to walk, slowly and determinedly towards the urinals on the other side of the room.

Halfway through my walk, nearly perpendicular with the offender and his stall, I look back up. He’s still staring. I continue to walk, looking up at him every so often to see that his gaze is transfixed on me. I stand in front of the urinal, uneasy. I shoot another quick glance and see his eyes dart about quick and refocus, with more intensity, on me. I think briefly for a moment, disengage from the urinal and walk quietly away, his eyes glued to me the entire time.

I have no idea what his problem was or what he was hoping to gain, but let me tell you, thank god the bathroom at the other end of the building was empty. It was later on that week I attempted to use the bathroom in the rear of the student center.

The Student Center Bathroom was, at one point, the most elegantly appointed on campus.

As per usual, I was walking along, humming “Baby Elephant Walk” (my de facto theme music for my time on campus). I swing wide the door and am face to face with a nude African-American male. Nudity usual does not shock me. I was taken aback. He leapt backward into the stall and slammed the door, his clothes strewn about the floor and the room smelling vaguely of shame and desperation (Axe Phoenix).

I have since learned to hold it.

A friend of mine has had similar experiences with the halls and stalls of Craven’s bathrooms. Including one ill-fated trip, to which bathroom, I forget. One of the nicer ones, if I recall correctly. He opened the door and the theremin started, he fell through space and time and landed, feet first in a world where it’s acceptable to defecate with the stall door open. The rustling newspaper, the khaki slacks bunched around a pair of loafers, the humid aroma (the class of person who poops with the stall door open cannot be expected to care much for his diet and as such would not have the freshest smelling stools (I wasn’t there, this is conjecture, but I make a decent case)), all burned into the poor soul’s mind .

He has since learned to hold it.

That’s all well and good, but you ask “What’s the point, man?” Well, man, let me tell you: there are things you expect in a bathroom (drug deals, unclean sink areas, the door handle you feel you need to grip with paper towels, strange odors) and there are things you don’t expect (open-door shitting, nude men, staring contests).

The trick is, at Craven, it’s everything you don’t expect AND everything you do expect. The bathrooms make Craven a tricky school to attend, you not only have to struggle to find the clean ones, after finding the clean ones you have to narrow down which ones are filled with the miscreants and bastard sociopaths and which ones are usually empty.

Kyle Bement is the editor of this blog and frequent contributor to Twitter and Facebook.

He is not a contributor to Spectrum Culture because they take themselves too seriously.