Public Washrooms are a Human Right

            On Saturday I started and almost finished memorizing in French Serge Gainsbourg’s 1970 song “Cannabis”, which doesn’t seem to be much about cannabis. It’s more about death being a female lover but he speculates in one line that maybe the reason he's thinking about death in this way is that he's high on pot.

            The food bank line-up was drastically shorter than it was during the two weekends leading up to Christmas. I arrived at my normal time but only counted twelve spots marked by carts and bags in the line ahead of me.

            The tall guy with the backwards-turned poor boy cap and the long slim woollen coat came in behind me. One good thing about him is that he tends to only smoke one cigarette at the beginning and doesn't light up again unless the wait is exceedingly long.

            I stepped away while he was smoking and started reading chapter six of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A quarter of the way into the story and I find it mostly tedious. The prose is not particularly interesting and Mary Shelley is not even close to being as good a writer as Edgar Allen Poe. I was surprised at how quickly the monster was created without much of any explanation as to how he was fashioned. The movie adaptations tend to make it more obvious that the monster is made from collected dead body parts but in the book it’s possible that the cadavers that Frankenstein had access to merely served as models for parts that he constructed. Frankenstein was a chemist and so he would have used chemistry to build the monster.

            The monster comes into being so quickly and without the dramatic lightning displays that happened in the original film adaptation. In the book Frankenstein goes into shock upon seeing his creation and becomes ill for several months, during which time the monster has disappeared. I think Frankenstein reencounters his monster in two more chapters and will find that it has learned to talk and educated itself.

            I went downstairs to use the washroom only to find the door locked with a sign saying that the washrooms are for Tool Library and food bank customers only and that anyone needing to use them must ask for a key from the people in charge of those services. I didn’t have to go badly enough to deal with the hassle of asking for a key and so I went back upstairs.

I finished my chapter and though I still didn’t have to go very badly, my curiosity became as strong a motivation as having to pee and so I went downstairs to ask for the key. I stood in the doorway and made the request but Angie shook her head. I asked, "Why not?" and she answered that she only has one fob and she's not going to give it out. I reminded her that the sign on the washroom door says that the washrooms are for food bank customers, and asked, "Am I not a food bank customer?" Martina, who was helping to stock the shelves, turned and asked with surprise, “That’s what it says on the door?” This was obviously a new thing for them too.

Before leaving the basement I walked down the hall to the Tool Library to find out what would happen if I asked for a washroom key there. The young woman at the counter told me that their key is just for members. I assume then that if I were to pay the $50 a year membership fee to acquire whatever card they give out to prove membership, she would have given me the key. At least she seemed to know what was going on.

I went back upstairs and chatted about the issue with the guy behind me. I guessed that this has to do with people going down to the washroom to either do drugs or to sleep, but I’ve been using that loo almost every Saturday for two years and never once have I seen anyone doing either of those things down there. Those activities are probably more nighttime occurrences and so they should at least have the washroom unlocked during the periods when the food bank is open. Why should a food bank customer have less access to the washroom than a Tool Library customer?

It seems to me that there is a law that a public building that contains any service that draws people into the building is required to provide a washroom for the public it serves. Based on the wording of the notice on the washroom door, building services at 1499 Queen Street West are well aware of the legal requirements and are passing the responsibility to their tenants of providing access to their customers. The Tool Library is taking that responsibility but the food bank is not.

            The tall young man with the doll eyes and the catatonic expression was moving like a bee from person to person to seek nicotine nectar. He never speaks but merely gestures with two fingers to his lips to each one he approaches. He either doesn’t remember the people like me that tell him they don’t smoke or he just figures they might have started since the last time he asked. A woman who had earlier asked me for the time twice in ten minutes had crossed the street and, having just lit a cigarette was on her was back to our side when the silent smoke-beggar approached her with his fingers to his lips. She moved to the right to get around him but he moved to the left and blocked her from getting to the curb. She moved to the left and he intercepted her again. She moved to the right and when he stepped in her way again she finally just shrugged and handed him her cigarette.

            As oblivious as he seems to be to anything but asking for cigarettes and smoking them, he never throws his butts on the sidewalk but rather always takes them over to the sidewalk garbage bin to carefully slip it into little round hole. What are those holes called by the way? I would imagine not “butt holes”.

            I saw Steve, the assistant food bank manager walking up Queen for work and approached him before he went inside. I asked if he knew that the washrooms downstairs are looked. He shook his head without looking at me and said, “It’s probably because too many people have OD’d down there!” I’ve never seen him look at anyone when speaking to them. He always seems to keep a cerebral distance. As he went inside I said to the back of his head that the sign says the washrooms are for food bank customers.

            A middle-aged blonde woman who’s there every week was surprised that Angie didn’t let me use her fob. She said, “She sees you all the time!” A chunky man in a baseball cap with a white moustaches and goatee, who’s been one of the first five people in line for years, told me that Angie had lent him her fob earlier but that he’d had to give her a cigarette for it.

            Ahead of me downstairs, an older woman was turned away because they could see on the system that she’d already been there on Thursday. There was a bit of a wait because she put up an argument about it.

            Once I was in front of the desk I asked Steve while he was checking me in on the computer, what they were going to do about the washroom situation. He said they were going to see if they could arrange to have the door unlocked while the food bank is open, but that meanwhile they would have ferry people to the washroom and open the door for them. There was some confusion because Steve thought that I wanted to use the washroom and so the young guy at the computer next to him got up to escort me. I told them I wanted to use the food bank.

            I didn’t take much from the shelves. On the first set of shelves there was a bottle 15% maple syrup but I had no use for it. The oatmeal with chocolate, nuts and fruit looked interesting, but I’m not a big fan of hot cereal, even in the wintertime. They still have lots of Kuna Pops snacks but they don’t do much for me. I took a pouch of sliced pears and a box of six dark chocolate macaroon granola bars.

            There were lots of canned goods on the next set of shelves but I have enough of beans and soup and so I just took a can of tuna and a container of coconut water with peach and mango. As usual I didn’t select any rice or pasta.

            From Angie’s station I didn’t take any milk but I got the usual eggs, grabbed a one-litre can of apple juice and a half a kilo pack of frozen stewing beef.

            I still had lots of potatoes and carrots from the Christmas haul and so from Sylvia’s section I just took five tomatoes, a couple of onions, three mandarins and two navel oranges.

            Angie didn’t apologize for not letting me use the washroom. And here I thought she liked me.