One Thing: the bathroom horror zoo

Why do hotels expect us to pee and poop in a glass box?

I recently stayed in a hotel room with a giant glass box in the middle of the room that housed the toilet and the shower, a prospect that made me praise every dark god in existence that I am currently single and travelling alone.

I like a little luxury, a touch of glamour. I’m an aspirationally fancy boy, within my meagre means.

The world can be a cruel and dirty and mean place, like an alley in a Dickens novel, like the patriotic aisle in that Walmart I went to once in West Virginia, like a CBD McDonald’s at 3am - so it’s only human to attempt to paste a veneer of beauty over the top of it all when you can. I often think about the Monet print in a sharehouse I used to frequent which covered a mouldy hole in the wall from when a drug dealer threw someone through the gyprock.

So, this is one of the reasons why I like the odd boutique hotel when I’m travelling. They’re not as luxurious as the five stars, but they also don’t feel like an escape-room from depression, like a motel does. And they can have some fun quirks - tiny clanking elevators, little plaques proudly telling you that you’re sleeping in a former slaughterhouse, and glass zoo exhibit so that whoever you’re sharing a room with can watch you piss and shit or shower. My one was frosted at least - many of them are completely clear.

I can’t think of a reason why this setup would be in any way desirable, except for those with a very specific fetish. And that’s great for them, but even then it would seem like a real lucky dip, just hoping to book a hotel with one of these strange horror zoos. When I put a photo of my room up on Instagram, I had all these people tell me stories of having to stay in one of these rooms with awful variations on the same horrific themes: with a very new boyfriend, with a group of work colleagues, as a teenage girl WITH THEIR DAD.

Obviously we need to unite as a society and ban these fishbowl toilets - even the cool Austin Powers 70s space-race style one that someone sent me from a hotel they stayed in. But it also made me realise how much of society is a polite illusion. It’s kind of like how they say you’re never more than 6ft away from a rat in the city - in a hotel room, are you ever really more than a few hands away from someone doing a wee? And is a bathroom door really that much more robust and private than a frosted pane of glass?

Yes.

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I’ve recently been reading about the newspaper/ magazine booms of New York in the 60s and 70s, because I’m that kind of nerd, and one of the things I was feeling sad about was that I never got to write cute little “slice of life” columns. And then I remembered I have my own publication where I make all the rules and questionable decisions, so ONE THING is gonna be that.

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