The problem with toilets
How do couples navigate sharing a toilet in the confines of a hotel room?
Toilets in hotel rooms often top the list of things that annoy me when travelling, in my admittedly privileged existence. The lack of privacy makes me think that either hotels assume people are travelling alone, or that couples occupying the room have a history sharing a prison cell.
In my early twenties I was doing a road trip with my then boyfriend, someone I was newly dating. We stayed in a motel room which had the toilet in the center of the room enclosed by four glass walls - like a shower stall, with sides that did not touch the ceiling. This was definitely not something that had been built to code, I thought to myself. Mortified we took it in turns to use the toilet in the lobby.
More recently my husband and I stayed in a hotel in Savannah, and the toilet stall door in our room was made of only slightly frosted glass. Not only could you see someone sitting on the toilet, but were able to discern their reading material too. There was no door to the bathroom either, just a heavy crimson curtain - as if we were in some kind of vaudeville stage production or a bordello. While we sort of managed the arrangement, my teenage children, who were sharing the bedroom next door, were horrified at the lack of privacy.
In our travels through the years, we’ve seen a variety of these situations where the toilet in the hotel room we are sharing is simply not private, regardless of price or star rating. In some cases there is no door to the bathroom at all, never mind a separate toilet stall. Others have sliding doors made of glass or wooden slats with gaps between, and one five star hotel had a bathroom and toilet therein that was separated from the bedroom by saloon-style doors, freely swinging with a gap at the top and bottom.
Is the assumption that because you are sharing a bedroom with someone you are OK with being privy to the sights and sounds and odours of them using the facilities? What if you are travelling with a colleague and sharing a room to cut costs? Or with a friend or a family member that isn’t your spouse or child? What if you have been allocated a shared room and the person you are sharing with is a relative stranger? This more affordable option, although usually with a person of the same sex as you, is often offered on art workshops.
Given the number of times I see these toilet/bathroom designs in hotel rooms which completely eschew privacy, I have to wonder: Are people by and large just more relaxed about using the toilet in close proximity to others than I am? And furthermore, should I perhaps strike RV holidays, camping trips, or stays in a correctional facility for literary research, off of my bucket list?
My husband resents the fact that public restrooms in the US all seem to have a standard 9-12 inch gap between the stall door and the floor. Not only can you see someone’s shoes, but also their trousers bunched around their ankles. And then there’s the gaps between the door and the partition frame which can be a good half inch on either side - enough to ensure you sometimes make eye contact with the person waiting impatiently to use it after you.
The 12 -24 inch gap between the top of the door and the ceiling ensures a tall person will undoubtedly be able to see all of you from above - a kind of crows nest vantage point. What do they think people are doing in there that requires such a lack of privacy and degree of surveillance? Chat GPT reckons the design is for easier cleaning, ventilation, and quick emergency access if someone faints or needs help. I prefer my 1984 theory: Constant surveillance.
I am sufficiently uptight about this stuff that its become imprinted in my subconscious and provides material for my anxiety themed nightmares. If I drink too much water before bed, I’ll dream I am desperate to pee (because in reality I am) and I’m searching for a clean toilet in a public place. All of the stall doors I open either reveal a filthy mess, the doors don’t close properly, or there are no walls and people are trafficking through.
Hotels that have a seperate toilet cubicle in the bathroom with walls that go up to the ceiling, and a door which shuts and locks, gets a five star rating from my husband, regardless of how good the hotel may be in other respects. “Hotels ought to list the details of their toilet setups in the room description, the same way they talk about whether or not you get a bath or a queen versus a king size bed,” he suggests. Which leads me to an idea for a kind of Trip Advisor website but which only talks about and rates the privacy of toilets in hotel rooms - Toilet Adviser?
Years ago my sister told me I likely had intimacy issues because of all of this stuff, and the fact that I said I would never dream of being in the bathroom if my partner was using the toilet, nor would I tolerate the same. “Why on earth do you have to be in there when they are busy?” I asked. “To chat? Brush your teeth? Use the shower? Can’t any of that wait?”
“Ok but what happens if one day either of you are ill or super old and need help in that department?” she ventured. To which my response was that we’d deal with that if and when it happened, and we didn’t require forty odd years of practise. Of course I’d be on hand to help someone I love in that situation, as I have done with my children when they were little. But unless that is a necessity, I make a distinction between intimacy and over-familiarity.
After having children I had to adjust my rules somewhat because little kids by and large do not abide by bathroom decorum. They bust in on you when you are shaving your legs, or lamenting the size of your thighs in the bathroom mirror, or sat on the toilet doing Wordle. And my cats now do the same if the bathroom door is not properly shut: One likes to sit on the edge of the bath and stare at me with his big green olive eyes, as if my soaking in the tub is suspicious. And another attempts to jump on my lap while I am sitting on the toilet, claws outstretched. Suffice to say that happened only once.
Still any of these scenarios are a tremendous upgrade compared to some of the public facilities we have encountered on our travels. Roadside and train toilets that look and smell like crime scenes, and despite its country’s reputation for impressive general hygiene, there was the hole in the floor toilet I encountered in a department store in Japan. Upon opening the door and surveying that scene, I quickly surmised you’d need super strong thighs for squatting and a Herculean capacity for balance, because god forbid you toppled and touched that unsanitary floor with your bare hands.
Seeing my frozen stance and expression, which likely resembled someone about to witness an execution, the elderly Japanese toilet attendant gently took me by the elbow and opened the door to another stall. She gestured inside and then to the small sign I must have missed which read: ‘Western toilet.’ In that moment I was so desperate to pee and grateful not to have to squat over a sinister-looking hole in the floor, that the large gap under the door and half inch spaces on either side seemed like a welcome home parade by comparison. God bless America indeed.