The Handicapped Stall

Howard stared blankly at the sweaty glass in front of him, filled only with cola-tinged ice cubes. In the background he could hear the faint and monotonous whine that was his sister, Amy, complaining about the latest wrong perpetrated by her latest boyfriend, but his concentration was enveloped by the sharp, yet familiar pain growing in his lower abdomen. He had to pee.

“So… what do you think I should do, Howie?” His sister said in a tone, which he knew meant that she really wasn’t going to take into consideration whatever he said next; only that her throat was dry from all that talking and she needed to pause for a sip of soda.

Howard opened his mouth as if to say something. He didn’t know why as he had no idea where the conversation was at this point, nor what an appropriate response would be to his sister’s question. Luckily, at just that moment their over-enthusiastic waitress joined Howard and Amy.

 “Is there anything else I could get for you folks? A refill on sodas maybe!” The waitress almost cheered. Howard could feel his bladder flip at the mention of soda.

            “I think I’m fine,” Howard said, “Amy get a dessert or something if you want, I’ve got to use the restroom.” Howard tried to get up from his chair and head off nonchalantly, yet with some haste as he could feel that embarrassment was immanent.

            Howard dodged his way past waiters balancing trays of drinks and entrees, children strapped in high-chairs at the ends of tables, flailing their arms and shaking their tear-stained faces, patrons shoving arms into outstretched sleeves, as if they were about to exit the restaurant into some kind of arctic tundra. Howard was relieved to find the wooden door with the little blue sign with the little white stick figure, which read “MEN.”

            Howard walked inside the restroom and surveyed the damage. It wasn’t a particularly dirty bathroom, but it did give off the sense that the employees hosed the room down at the end of the day, rather than clean it. Howard looked into one of the stalls. The seat of the toilet was covered in soaking wet pieces of toilet paper that looked as if they had once been some kind of makeshift toilet seat cover. Howard wasn’t about to tackle that disaster. He approached the bank of the urinals. They were all wet as well, but this didn’t bother Howard as much, as he would not be making skin to porcelain contact with them.

            Howard stood in front of the urinal for some time, trying to relax, trying to concentrate on the task at hand, but he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get comfortable. Ever since he was a child, Howard had never been able to pee standing up. He suspected that it was because his mother raised he and his sister alone. Without a father around, Howard had never learned how to do it.

            Looking around the bathroom one last time, Howard noticed an option he hadn’t considered before: the handicapped stall. Whenever he would use a public bathroom, Howard would always avoid the handicapped stall. Although he had never seen an actual handicapped person use the handicapped stall, he figured they had exclusive rights to it. But these were desperate times, and he could feel the cola from his latest meal lapping up against the backs of his tonsils.

When he entered the stall, he could see that the place was pristine. The toilet seat shimmered, and the linoleum was immaculate. Howard couldn’t have asked for anything more from a public restroom. For a moment he felt a pang of guilt, then quickly squelched that guilt with the rationalization that every other time he had entered a bathroom and the handicapped stall had been occupied, it had not been occupied by a handicapped man. With a sense of true contentedness, he pulled down his pants, sat down on the toilet, and experienced a sensation Howard imagined was much like the one a bathtub might get when the plug is pulled from its drain. As Howard continued to relieve himself, he heard the sound of the door to the bathroom swing open followed by a familiar sound which he couldn’t put his finger on. There were no footsteps, he realized, only this sound. The sound was like rubber rolling over a sticky floor. A look of horror began to stretch itself across Howard’s face as he realized that it was the sound of a wheelchair.

Howard quickly realized that he was trapped. He couldn’t leave now because then this handicapped man would see that he was in no way handicapped. And he couldn’t stay in the stall because it was the only handicapped accessible stall in the restroom, the handicapped man would certainly wait for him to vacate this stall rather than attempt any of the other means of bodily waste deposit available in the bathroom. Howard could hear the tacky sound of the wheelchair approaching his stall door.

The stall door shook slightly as the handicapped man knocked.

“Occupied!” Howard instinctively responded, then clasped his hand over his mouth, amazed at his own actions. Now the handicapped man knew he was in there. Howard looked around the stall for some hints at a possibility of escape. He looked around to find an air duct that he could escape through, but there were none to be found. He thought about shimmying under the side of the stall into a neighboring stall, but he was wearing his favorite sweater and those floors were wet and probably covered in millions of species of bacteria. Perhaps he could just take off his sweater and shirt and just slide, bareback, under the side of the stall. However, Howard had just used up the last of his sick days last month and this would be a bad time to contract bubonic plague. He decided that the only thing to do was to wait it out.

Years passed by, which were probably only minutes, and Howard could still see the handicapped man’s wheels from under the stall door. He also figured that his sister had probably left by now, and that he would be getting an earful from his mother about abandoning his little sister in her time of need, and leaving her with the check no less. Another knock came from the stall door.

“Hey buddy,” the handicapped man said, “you alright in there… you need me to call somebody?”

“Nope, doing just fine.” Howard responded, not knowing what else to do. He realized that if he had said nothing the handicapped man might have attempted to get him help. He wouldn’t be able to handle that embarrassment.

“Well, hurry up, guy. I really gotta take a leak here,” the handicapped man whined.

Another hundred years passed on like an eternity for Howard, and brought with them another knock on the door. This time the knock was much more forceful. He began to wring his hands nervously. The only other time he had been this close to confrontation was in the third grade when Amy tried to pet a strange dog on their way home from the bus stop. The dog growled at his sister, and Howard punched it in the head. Then they both ran home, Howard grinning overconfidently. He couldn’t remember if the dog chased them or not.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play here,” said the handicapped man, “I bet you’re not even handicapped. I am so sick of you people using our stalls. There’s a handicapped sign on the door for a reason!”

The handicapped man was shouting now. His banging on the door was growing more and more intense. “If I find out that you’re not handicapped when you come out of that stall, I’m gonna sue your ass and then make you handicapped myself!” Howard watched, motionless with fear, as the door rattled with violent banging. He could feel the screws twisting slowly out of their hinges with every rap on that stall door. He knew that in just a few minutes that stall door would come crashing down on him. He wondered what it would be like to be handicapped.