We choose our favorite toilet stalls like we choose our favorite people.

         Today, I have officially decided that the stall on the very left of the LRC restroom is my favorite. These stalls will never belong to us, as they have seen bodies beyond our own. Yet, there is something subtlety intimate about internally declaring “this” cubicle to be your go-to.

         It’s easy to say that there is nothing romantic about toilets. Being the main catalyst in disposing of human waste, it’s only rational to find them filthy; the butt of low-effort jokes. What is romantic about pungent smells stirring in humid still air? However, toilets being treated as such leads to a further lack of care in comfort rooms. Only then is there really nothing romantic about toilets.

       Comfort rooms are often intimate without us knowing. Whatever happens behind the creaky vandalized wooden door filled with scratches and etches is between you and the lone porcelain. How many people had it seen undress apart from myself? How heavy are the bags that have rested on its seats? How red are his eyes after rivers upon rivers flowed across his cheeks? How piercing was the silence when it was her eyes tracing the graffiti on the walls? How did their chicken adobo smell after they ate alone in such thick stagnant air?

       We often overlook how the comfort room is quite literally what it is, not just reserved for physical relief. In such a fast-paced busy world, the comfort room acts as a third place in plain sight, something painfully ordinary but worth it for a five-minute escape. Friend groups of five or six hog the mirror against the sinks to fit on the screen of a phone. Two or three girls dressed in blazers and slacks, their names on their chest, pacing back and forth repeating barely memorized lines to each other from damp index cards. The same girls would return later that day to change dainty high-heels to rubber shoes for P.E. class. 

       It’s a little odd to refer to comfort rooms as “romantic”. But socially, the phrase “CR ta!” indicates that a trip to the comfort room is more than just fulfilling bodily needs as it is a lonely one, and for those who get a few minutes of solitude, it is sometimes needed. To maintain the social and individual significance of the comfort room, it starts with a change in perspective, to view it as more than a place where waste goes and never comes back. If we begin to treat comfort rooms with more dignity and cleanliness, then they can truly live up to their name– the comfort room.