Truth and Vandalism: Men's Room Graffiti

The author does not condone nor promote acts of vandalism.

Hello Void!

Honesty can be hard to find. All of us are constantly erecting facades of people who we want to, but will never be. While not a bad thing to do, there are secular confessionals where some of us erupt crude, occasionally crass, and always illegal notes on the wall. Good or bad, silly or serious the stall walls, for some, have served as a bastion of public facing vulnerability.

While some notes are derogatory and meant to put down others which I have always been curious about are comments about the self, small admissions of identity that has been compressed to unsustainable pressures. They are often about all the things we have made taboo for one reason or another. A reliable place of safety and security that was afforded to me by the building codes of all 50 states.

Tho I have never worked up the gumption to write a note myself (too much of a goody-two-shoes I'd reckon) I find the ones of thoes before me comforting. I have spent many an afternoon sobbing in the stalls of bathrooms of public schools, universities, and national labs around the country. Rarely was this angst brought on by those around me, more often it was just the pressures of existing, and the stochastic feelings of impending doom that wash ashore from time to time.

Weather on the first day of my fathers incarceration in 1st grade when he left with out saying good by, or any given day in high school when the pressures of the closet seemed too great, or when a panic from nowhere and nothing rapidly sets in while perusing the grocery store, or even when working on the projects of my dreams when the horror of impostor syndrome feels sharp in my gut...

...a bathroom stall is always a redoubt.

Loneliness is of course grinding in it's own right but the dull and protracted cancer is far preferable to the acute and sharp gun shot wounds life often spits carelessly at you. For a moment... just one fucking moment...it is ok to rest, to be okay with yourself in this world, to be a harbor in the tempest, a place where the ramparts can be surrendered and the internal structure, and the damage done therein, can be cared for.

Masculinity of course demands that I acknowledge the patheticness of this yet my better angles (or more likely my vanity) allow me to share this with you. Tho my predecessors whose work is presented above acted in anonymity...it was total bravery. They shared a joke, disclosed an illness, and admitted how hard the world really is. Unfortunately the men's room stalls are often the only place where we feel we can be vulnerable, the only place we can share a truth about ourselves and be ok with others knowing it.

Yet even now I hesitate to publish this under my own name. The fear of the (small c) conservative world in which I tread and the cutting opinions of my superiors, elders and colleagues in my chosen field make me doubt the acceptance that I think I will get. To most people I am *straight passing*, which requires me to "come out" to every person around me. I feel the need to make this disclosure to most of my professional counterparts as I find it prevent the folks who do harbor hate for the things that I am from accidentally showing me that hate. I do it in joke, with a reference to an ex, or through some other gentle yet clear form. I must return to the world.

In the bathroom stall, tho, I am free