“There’s no better way of rejecting where you came from, no plainer declaration of an intent to reinvent yourself, than moving to New York.”

~Jonathan Franzen, First City

This is not one of those stories about 20-somethings who move to New York City and find themselves humiliated and demoralized in ways they never dreamed possible. Because, it turns out, New York is a magical place beyond the traditional conception of public shame. That’s why, instead, this is a story about who’s watching when you pee in Times Square.

About two years ago, on a cold weekday night at the beginning of December, I sat in one of Charmin’s much-hyped Times Square bathrooms with my new pinstripe slacks down around my ankles, swaying ever so slightly to the surround-sound stereo. The music was a highly-branded, chipper blues piece:

There’s a brand new dance that’s been sweeping the nation

It’s a Charmin party mambo dance sensation

East coast west coast kids a-groovin

You try it one time and you can’t stop movin’

The ambiance and design of the bathroom complex itself was clearly meant to relieve concerns about being goosed or infected or peeped at or simply unable to find a respectable receptacle in which to dump your waste. It did nothing, however, for my anxiety about soiling this pristine porcelain monument, looking like a no-good dirty tourist, or leaving behind my small-town beginning and making it big in the most unforgiving city in the nation.

When there’s a soundtrack, no one can hear you pee.

I arrived in New York City in June of 2006. I meant to arrive four years earlier, for college, but I failed to realize that Long Island doesn’t count. My ignorance was understandable. I’m from a college town in upstate New York that strangers can’t pronounce. We used to hang out at Wal-Mart. By the time I turned 21 I was thoroughly petrified that that would be my life, so I moved to a large city that everyone has heard of and which doesn’t have a single Wal-Mart. I had declared my intent. Soon, I would be a legitimate, bona fide, real New Yorker. Take that, podunk hometown!

The first hurdle was the money. They say that English majors can’t get jobs, but I proved them wrong. All it took was three months living in my spinster aunt’s house at the ass end of Queens, with her perpetually leaned in over my shoulder, peering at my monitor and asking “any jobs today?” Sometimes when she did this her copious boobs squished against my upper arm.

At least I didn’t move home.

By September, I had my respectable publishing job, had my own place in Astoria (a traditionally Greek neighborhood now burgeoning with young professionals, sandwiched between a major power plant and LaGuardia airport), had my monthly subway pass, for god’s sake. Commuting goes a long way toward that Real New Yorker feeling. At my Aunt’s house, where she had lived as a City Girl for over 50 years, I was still the naïve niece from out of town. Now, Metrocard in hand and business casual on my back, I was finally “passing.” I rolled myself up in the crowds and smiled to think that they would never know.

December began and I prepared for my official envoy back to Oneonta, practicing passionate extollations of how amazing The City is.

Also making its move on the Big Apple in the winter of 2006 was Charmin. After a great success providing toilets stocked with its signature paper at the Ohio State Fair, Charmin decided to take the plunge and open a public toilet facility smack in the middle of Times Square: a place where the brand manager felt the “bathroom tissue message would be relevant.”

The “Advertising Gimmick Bathroom Here” message was conveyed up and down 42^nd street by a giant blue billboard some four stories high, a family of happy, fuzzy bears frolicking across. Does a bear, in the woods? Maybe, but when he does in Manhattan, it’s a lot more posh.

I am somewhat ashamed to admit the reason I was in Times Square in the first place—to buy cheesy New York souvenirs as Christmas presents. I don’t remember who in my life I thought would appreciate an NYC bottle opener, but I did buy one. On the way back to the subway, I glanced up at those frolicking bears, felt a familiar tingle in my bladder region, and thought “You know, I could pee.” That’s where the dilemma arose. Sure, I could wait until I got home. Take the train out to the end of the line, and sit down to pee in my tiny but secure Astoria bathroom like I did every day of the week…or I could take this opportunity to see what those bears were so happy about. I hadn’t left Oneonta to pass up such adventures.

But every city has Rules. In New York, the first rule is Don’t Look Like a Tourist. Don’t look up, don’t unfold a map, don’t look too happy to be there. And definitely don’t be caught in a tourist junket with your pants down. Twice I walked by those gold-trimmed doors hidden beneath the giant blue billboard, too conflicted to commit either to Charmin or the subway.

I’m a writer, which means I do a lot of things on the basis of “it will make a great story,” regardless of whether or not this turns about to be true. It’s what helps me get through the most embarrassing, infuriating, or otherwise demoralizing moments of my life—the promise of future storytelling glory. Ultimately, it made my decision. I’ll admit, I was very much looking forward to the fact that I would now be able to use the line “I peed in Times Square.”

At the lobby entrance stood five Charmin employees in blue shirts. Two of them rushed to open the door for me. I wondered what the hourly rate was for Charmin greeters. How one would apply for such a thing, and if they’d told their friends they got the job. Or were they actors? Did they get points toward an Equity card? I never saw any of the “Charmin representatives roaming the streets dressed as toilets” that the Times article touted. How often did those poor people have to suffer the humiliation of drunks and smart-asses pretending to shit or piss in their lap-bowls? Roaming toilets do have to show their faces…only the ones in the bear suits can hide.

Inside, a grand staircase ascended in front of me at a dangerous angle. Large helpful arrows pointed my way up. Straight ahead for excretionary satisfaction. Once I hit the second floor, everything was covered in blue carpet.

“Welcome!” said a Charmin girl posted at the top of the stairs. “How are you?!” Between entering the building and finally sitting down in the bathroom, I was greeted no fewer than six times. Where was my big, anonymous city? Every person in that place smiled right at me. Looked me in the eye. I tried to look at them, but I couldn’t hold their gaze.

They all knew what I was there to do.

I soldiered on into the Charmin fishbowl. Every 10 feet huge plasma screen televisions hung on the wall. High-definition Charmin bears danced to upbeat elevator jazz tunes alluding heavily to the joys of toilet paper. More charming Charmin employees stood in the middle of the floor and on the blue-carpeted half circle benches. Half had clipboards, and the other half were dancing along to the soundtrack with only the slightest hint of irony. Irony which stemmed mainly from the fact that the lounge area was completely empty. Accounts of a “potty palooza” had been greatly exaggerated. I’d expected a line. Apparently, so did the Charmin corporation, because before I even got close to the bathroom, I traversed a winding maze of retractable barriers. Instead of making a straight shot across the void, I traveled easily five times the distance, turning up and down the artificial alleys. In front of me were maybe three people doing the same, spaced roughly twenty feet apart. Easily a few hundred could have queued up here …and waited hours to pee.

My aunt’s friend’s son was also trying his hand at 20-something NYC dreams that year. I’m sure many people would have considered him a success; he was an intern for the Late Show. His job was to solicit audience members by trolling long lines at the TKTS booth asking David Letterman trivia. Anyone suspected to be from the greater New York area was disqualified. The Late Show wanted foreigners, tourists. He wanted a job where he didn’t have to stand outside for hours at a time, without bathroom breaks. Did the Charmin billboard taunt him?

I came to the end of the line, and yet another guy in a blue shirt welcomed me up onto a staging area made of beautiful hardwood floors, surrounded by a bank of twenty beautiful hardwood doors. He was the kind of hot that I’d only begun to accept as viable in real life—an Abercrombie runner-up, on an island where men with sandy hair and cut cheeks congregate. Another Equity hopeful.

“Hi there!” he said. So enthusiastic. He held up his hand.

Enter stage fright. The confusion of a stranger in a strange land. Was it a…did this man really want to…?

High-five me?

Apparently not, because when I brought up my hand, just as I committed to forward arm action, better half of my dignity screaming “what are you doing!?” he turned to point me toward my designated stall. Door number 1. I hurried inside and locked the door behind me, afraid the Charmin army might start clapping encouragement.

It was truly a luxurious public bathroom. The toilet had a lid. The door went all the way to the ground. It had a functioning lock—a nice one, not one of those cheap slide pins. Every surface was spotless, and glinted in the warm lighting. The music from the waiting area was piped in, but no plasma screen.

A little wiggle to the left

A little jiggle to the right

Cuz when I’m close to you

It’s a sheer delight.

Cha cha cha! Charmin!

If, in some drunken contracting error, Charmin had added a bathtub to the left of the sink, the stall would have been the same size as the bathroom in my apartment, where I often woke to find my roommate’s discarded Q-Tips floating in the toilet bowl. The standing room was roughly equivalent – the size of a standard toilet rug. I said earlier that the first obstacle to New Yorkerness was money. You never forget it here, where every inch of the ground you walk on has value, and so much wealth stands concentrated right before your eyes but just out of your grasp. Details of the lease agreement were never released, but real estate in the vicinity of the Charmin potty palooza was at the time going for between $150 and $225 per square foot per year. My private little slice of Times Square cost the developers upwards of $2,200. Just so I could have the privilege of sitting there.

I sat. At my right hand hung six rolls of toilet paper. The softest, quiltedest toilet paper to hit my skin since as far back as I could remember. It would never run out. I lingered, appreciating the endless bounty of sparkling white porcelain. My coat hung on the door hook like a tidy domestic scene.

Domesticity and cleanliness is not achieved without sacrifice. Every tidy domestic scene hides a sinister underbelly. Jealousy, that domestic scene x is just that much tidier than yours. Suspicion, that the proprietor of the scene cleaned up the evidence. Upon moving to my Astoria apartment, I learned that all kinds of things get dirty that I had never imagined before. The racks in the refrigerator. The top of the toilet tank. I didn’t have my mother’s unlimited drive for keeping a house clean. Charmin, on the other hand…they cleaned every single one of those twenty bathrooms after every use. I could show up in a random restroom just as the janitor was departing with her rolling cart full of cleansers, and it would still be nothing compared to the sublime clean of the this place. No, scrubbing alone would not account for the Charmin bathroom. It’s a social phenomenon: with so many people watching, no way to disappear into the crowd, who would dare leave a mess? “That’s her,” they’d point at my back on the way out, “That girl peed on the seat. She clogged the toilet. A thousand people crapped here yesterday and we’ve never had to plunge before…”

Earlier that winter I’d taken the 7 train in to Manhattan, because my beloved NW had let me down with delays. It was crowded, but we commuters formed a polite buffer circle around the homeless man sleeping on two seats. Once the train was in motion, he woke up, scratched himself, left his nest of filthy blankets and garbage bags, and went out to take a shit in the space between the cars. There was no toilet paper involved. And no shame, private or otherwise.

After a year of living in New York, I learned another valuable use for the crowds, beyond a tacit sense of belonging. Among City people, it doesn’t matter what you do—I flashed a thick crowd in Lincoln Center when I bent down to fix my shoe at the Midsummer Night Swing—they’ve seen worse, and you will never see them again. Your humiliation is yours alone, a matter between you and your self-image.

In my private luxury loo, I washed my hands with fragrant soap under deliciously hot water. I dried them thoroughly under the hand dryer, instead of wiping the water off on my pants. And then, as soon as it began, it was time to leave.

I didn’t stay to chat with the dancing employees surrounded by the dancing bears. I pulled my scarf up around my chin and waved with my eyes down at the gauntlet of goodbyes.

“Would you mind filling out a survey about your experience?” one of the clipboard-holders at the bottom of the stairs asked me.

Demographic information: Female. 22. New York resident. Excellent Charmin Restroom experience. They wanted my email address. So they could write and ask me about my toilet habits in market research detail.

“Sorry, I have to go.” I excused myself out onto the anonymous street.

One of the main concerns the advertisers had about the Charmin Times Square project was that they wouldn’t be able to measure the direct impact, if any, it had on the company’s market share. Sure, sales had spiked in Ohio after the fair, but that was in a state full of Ohioans. Times Square is full of transients and transplants; I could be anywhere by now. I don’t think they’d be pleased to hear from me anyway: I’ve never bought a single roll of Charmin. But I don’t feel ashamed.