RuKsaK

The International Toilet Summit took place last week.

Something guidebooks, travel stories, dinner table conversations and moderate liberalism neglect is the importance of toilets to the travel experience. Of course, food, people, customs, history, weather are all part of it. But, the places you shit and piss are hugely cultural moments too.

So, been meaning to spill this epic on here for a while. This week, for each day, I’ll be posting on toilets I’ve used. I won’t be using the word ‘used’ again however. Day one is my most fondly personal; Russia.
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The Zoological Museum in Petersburg is dustily and bulkily stuffed with dead animals. In a spaghetti jar there’s a floating tapeworm, all mangled like a renegade noodle. Peter the Great’s dog, snake and horse are rubbished together in a wall cabinet. My favourite is the collapsed mammoth, sitting, legs spread with a cricket bat, auburn cock on display.

I went there with Natasha on our third date. I needed a hangover dump. The gents were next to the cloakroom.

This ammonium farm had three cubicles, all doorless. My sphincter was not perturbed by this obstacle as much as I was. I looked around. A few cockroaches – typically the only living beasts in this toilet, in this museum. Just under the shelf window was a spare door. I picked it up, shuffled backwards into the most immediate stall. Rested the door on the frame and squatted over the hole. Perched a hand on the side panel, another over my nose and let it go.

Doorless toilets, in my experience, are also paperless. This was before the ’98 economic crisis and also in the middle of the monetary loss of three zeros on Russian currency. I wiped on three 100 rouble notes and resumed our date.
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The Zenit Stadium has the worst toilet I’ve ever exposed my arse to. It’s like a post-nuclear war locker room. It has urinals, but, again, doorless toilet stalls with a rotten drain, but no drainage. Tiled everywhere in old blue.

By half-time of the match the floor is two-inch deep in Russian piss, mixed, unfanned and fucking putrid. To reach the shitters you have to go to the back, paddling your shoes through this. It’s also hectic with supporters letting out swift squirts and craps. Squatting for my liquid crouch other guys could see me, trousers down, straining, wiping with roubles, pulling up. Desperately pressing a hand against the greasy wall to avoid slipping and slapping down in the yellow reservoir. Hands are washed with spit or not at all.
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A bored twelve-year-old half-entertained himself with me as a crouching commercial break one time. Caught short, returning home from the metro, I had to dive into a derelict brick hut for a standard-horrid vodka arse-squit. Mid-strain this boy walked in, with a diagonal cigarette. Unmoved, and maybe only semi-amused, somewhere in his head, he stared, dully until I screamed;
‘Fuck off!’
His eyelids and left lip just about indicated agreement. He left. That’s still the only time a twelve-year-old stranger has watched me shitting in a grotty alcove.
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I could have a Russian Toilet Week followed by an International Week, but won’t milk it.

On the Friday, I’ll make my point. Tomorrow: Saudi Arabia.

Ammonia is not a Greek Goddess.

Monday, November 22, 2004

International Toilet Week; Part one - Russia