Abstract:
Where is the Room of Bath?: a semi-fiction essay on the future of the bathroom. From the near future to the distant future, from the year 2000 to the year 3000, we follow a mildly radical history of the bathroom. It begins in the year 2000, your are in France, eating in a restaurant, you are looking for the bathroom, and you do not speak French.
Abstract:
Sex in the Future: I suspect that sex in the future could well be radically different from what most people might expect. I doubt that the argument, that sex has changed relatively little in the past several thousand years, will survive the next hundred years of Dialectical Reason. Beastiality, Incest, and Pedaphilia. Outrageousness becomes the norm, and thus impossible. Loss of the need for human contact and physical action.
Essay: Where is the Room of Bath?: social evolution of the public restroom It is the year 2000, you are in France, eating in a restaurant, you are looking for the bathroom, you do not speak French. You walk to the back of the restaurant, you see a door. If it's the kitchen door, you'll pretend to be the food inspector, if it's the wrong restroom door, you'll pretend you're simply French. You walk through the door, it is the restroom, you spot a member of the "other" sex. It is the wrong restroom, you panic. You spot a member of your "own" sex...they are in the wrong restroom too. No, this seems to be a lounge area: couches, mirrors, sinks, make-up tables. There is music piped in, the toilets are in little closets, off to the left. These are sight, sound, and scent proof stall. Loud fans and music intermingle in a force-field of white noise, protecting the weak of heart from the incessant blare of the restaurant's maddening crowd, as well as from the mutual shame of various embarrassing excremental processes. A plethora of potpourri is wafting as well, as it has been known to do, in such circumstances. According to the restroom attendant, the unisex bathroom evolved out of a desire for more efficient use of space. This desire was magnified by the trend towards bisexuality and bisexual experimentation in the homosexual and heterosexual communities. The clincher was the The Society for Mature Thinking, in their global protest, which led to the signing of the Sexual Desegregation Proclamation in the year 1999. Many feared the breakdown of heterosexual dating due to the loss of secrecy and illusion, but most agreed that heterosexual dating was due for a breakdown. The Separate But Equal party had a strong following, but found it difficult to argue against the obsoleteness of segregated bathrooms in a largely homosexual and bisexual culture.
It is the year 2010, you are in France, once again, eating in a restaurant, looking for the bathroom. The lounge of the unisex bathroom looks much the same as it did ten years ago, but gone are the little water closets. The ultra private stall have been replaced by sleeker models. The feet of miscellaneous and dubious sexes fidget openly to the view of the lounge. The sound concealing fans have been replaced by slightly higher tech sound filters. Most patrons still lock themselves securely in, in order to avoid embarrassing intrusions, but some leave their doors unlocked. They do so to encourage visitors, accidental or otherwise, and regard such intrusions with the happy nonchalance of meeting a stranger in a restaurant, for this is what it is. These intrusions tend to be dealt with by use of the standard greeting, "Allo". Apologies, such as "Pardon", have disappeared along with much of the traditional embarrassment. There are even those who have come to leave their doors open, some call them exhibitionists, but then no one listens to the Americans anyway.
It is the year 2020, you are in the bathroom of a French restaurant, sitting in a stall. The computer monitor built into the door provides a number of screen savers for your viewing pleasure. Voice commands allow you to browse through electronic magazines and communicate with others. For nominal credits, the monitor acts as a videophone, on which you can call others in their stalls or in the lounge. For a slightly higher price, you can call your home computer and make a few minor changes to an essay that you have been writing on the connection between scatological nightmares and childhood bathroom anxiety. The computer's voice command system is also equipped with a translator, which can be used for editing or for asking where the toilet paper is.
It is the year 2030, the languages have united, it's not quite Esperanto, more like potpourri. You enter the lounge and notice something different, something subtle. The soundproof walls still isolate the restaurant noise, but the restroom somehow seems noisier and yet less loud at the same time. You hear talking, clear distinct talking, casual conversation, the music is gone and the sound filters have been turned off. The stalls have been replaced by shadows of their former selves, the partitions go up only to the nose. People of various and dubious sexes and genders are peering over, conversing casually with their neighbors. Holographic stall doors disappear as you walk through them. The computer monitor projection floats in the electronic door. For seekers of solitude and privacy, each stall's computer can form a sound barrier, but many patrons have become in the habit of leaving the sound barrier off and the electronic door open. They have evolved out of traditional anxieties over the sights, scents, and sounds of various excremental functions.
It is the year 2040, you can't seem to operate the holographic stall door, it's not that it won't let you pass, it simply doesn't seem to be there. You are having the same problems with the sound barrier. No, the motion sensors and voice recognition systems are not faulty. They've taken the doors out, they've become unnecessary. The holographic partitions may be raised or lowered to any height, but in France it's considered an insult to even have it turned on.
It is the year 2050, the commodes of the unisex bathroom sit in a circle facing one another. The multiple sexes and genders chat. It is as though there are two restaurants, one in the front where friends consume and one in the back where strangers chat and...exhume.
It is the year 2060, there are commodes in the lounge, scattered all around, trying to look inconspicuous. It is strange, this subculture of the unisex restroom lounge, I feel as though I have entered Vitellius' ideal vomitorium. All seems permissible here, natural and good, but leaving the restroom for the restaurant feels like going from the beach to the church in one's bathing suit: one suddenly feels naked when one is naked and not on the beach any longer. Out in the restaurant itself, flatulence and nudity are curiously frowned upon, though belching has once again become a high form of praise.
It is the year 2070, you are still in France, they've torn down the churches and built schools in their places. No, religion hasn't died, it simply evolved into the 21st Century, merging itself back into art and science. It has become common, here in France, for citizens to go naked to schools and restaurants. Flatulence, though still not a form of praise, is no longer frowned upon, as it has once again become a popular if not high form of theatre. However, one might note that the current literature on 16th Century Theatre of Flatulence is considered to be quite highbrow at the moment. Wandering around the rear of the restaurant, you can't find the bathroom. You look all around, then you notice the artful stools along the bar. You ask the bartender where the bathroom is. They shout, "Voila!".
It is the year 2080, you are sitting in a restaurant in France, your chair is your toilet. How simple, how practical. "How existential", you think.
It is the year 2090, your cybernetic suit attaches itself to your cyber chair and your cyber table. Your suit provides you with nutrients and processes your waste. There are no need for toilets, or for restaurants for that matter, but the French are still sentimental about such things.
It is the year 3000, the schools have been torn down, there are no more restaurants, France is just a footnote. We have no bodies, we have no anxieties or hang-ups. We live in cyberspace. Our cybernetic suits were replaced with synthetic bodies, our artificial brains were wired for continuous interface with each other, our physical life has become as unconscious a process as breathing...or digesting.