Bathroom Humor

Jacques Lacan observed that public life in the Western world, rather like the majority of primitive communities, is subjected to the laws of urinary segregation. The bathroom serves the function of sorting society into men and women. Ludwig Wittgenstein once told a few of his students that one of his strongest childhood memories was the bathroom of his parents’ house, in which on the wall there was a discolored patch of broken plaster that suggested a sort of terrifying duck. No wonder, then, that he was attracted to the theory of the “duck-rabbit”: he wished to transform that demonic duck into a friendly rabbit. And perhaps the most influential work of the twentieth century is Duchamp’s “Fountain,” a urinal.

Today’s date should remind us that in the history of rock the principle of urinary segregation led to one of its more celebrated episodes, one that took place in England at a roadside petrol station on Stratford’s Romford Road. In the late evening hours of 18 March 1965, a Daimler carrying Rolling Stones’ members Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, and Brian Jones, their chauffeur and various others, pulled up to the station. Bill Wyman got out and asked the manager, Charles Keeley, for permission to use the toilet. Wyman was told by Mr. Keeley that the public toilet was out of order, and he wasn’t about to let the long-haired Wyman and the rest of the motley crew use the staff bathroom. The need to urinate being rather severe, Wyman, Jagger and Jones out of necessity relieved themselves against a nearby wall, violating Mr. Keeley’s sense of public decorum. At a hearing the following July, the three Rolling Stones were each fined 5 pounds, roughly equivalent at the time to about 8 dollars. Subsequently, the toilet contributed to the rock community sorting itself out into rival camps: there was the Beatles camp (clean and wholesome), and the Rolling Stones camp (dirty and dangerous).

Of course, the toilet has always figured highly in both the formation of rock culture (urinary segregation as a consequence of racial segregation in the South in which Elvis grew up; Elvis would later die in his bathroom) and in its depiction (George Michael being charged with “lewd conduct” in a public toilet in Los Angeles in 1998). In order to commemorate March 18 as the day which acknowledges our social practice of urinary segregation, I have assembled the following playlist, to be listened to, of course, in addition to the Rolling Stones’ album Beggars Banquet (1968; pictured).

Ten Songs Of The Commode:
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window – The Beatles
Norwegian Wood (“I . . . crawled off to sleep in the bath”) – The Beatles
Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room – Brownsville Station
God’s Own Drunk (“I wasn’t . . . commode huggin’ drunk”) – Jimmy Buffett
Mirror in the Bathroom – The English Beat
Bathroom Wall – Faster Pussycat
Rockstar (“And a bathroom I can play baseball in”) – Nickelback
Rock ‘n’ Roll Toilet – The Soft Boys
867-5309/Jenny – Tommy Tutone
Why Does It Hurt when I Pee? (“I got it from the toilet seat”) – Frank Zappa

Update (3/18/09, 4:25 p.m. DST) – Subterranean outhouse blues: Apparently some of Bob Dylan’s Malibu neighbors are complaining about a portable toilet that has sat for seven months on the singer-songwriter’s estate. They say at night the sea breeze delivers odors strong enough to drive people from their bedrooms; see the complete story in the L. A. Times about the ghastly smell blowin’ in the wind here.