On Bathrooms with No Towels

Everyone loves the comfort of their own home. You can walk around with no pants on. You can eat an entire block of cheese with your bare hands. You can get stoned and watch “Coco” and cry so hard that you almost throw up. Also, you know where everything is: backup salsa? Under all the cans of beans in the pantry. Extra toilet paper? Precariously holding up the box full of random crap in the closet. Hand towels for the bathroom? Exactly where they should be…IN THE BATHROOM.

When you’re a college student or in that magical post-graduation period, there are a lot of unacceptable things that just kinda get accepted. A filthy kitchen full of dirty dishes, flies, and your own mother’s disgust (sorry, Mom). Red solo cups filling every inch of surface space, inside and out. A massive television accompanied by folding chairs (or possibly just empty floor to sit on). There is one thing, though, that I was never able to accept, no matter how collegiate the residence, no matter how single-and-ready-to-mingle the resident, no matter how big the TV! Not having a place to dry your hands in the bathroom.

I don’t know what it is about this particular issue that makes my blood boil at such a high temperature but there is just something about using a bathroom outside of your own living space, doing your business, washing your hands, and then realizing there’s not a single god damn piece of fabric or paper in the room with which to dry your hands. In that moment, when I’m standing there, hands soaking wet, shaking with rage, I can only form a single thought: I fucking hate it here and I must leave immediately.

Do I wipe my hands on the bathmat and immediately soil them again? Do I pull the shower curtain off the rings as an aggressive, but fair, act of retribution? Do I wipe my hands on my jeans like some sort of animal? Or do I shake my hands as I walk away like a suburban dad leaving the Olive Garden?

Regardless of what I do in this horrifying, traumatic situation, just know that you have created and maintained a hostile environment and as The Dude/George Bush once said, “This aggression will not stand, man.”

Now, you may be thinking: Dang, Will must hate public bathrooms with those air dryers for your hands that don’t really dry your hands but do create a gross puddle on the floor. And you would be at least partially right! I don’t love those dryers but I do love the planet Earth… and at least they’re trying! They have a machine dedicated to attempting to dry your hands. I feel the same way when the paper towel dispenser is out of paper: yes, I am mad, yes, my hands are still wet but I’m guessing that at least some of the time there is a way to dry my hands here without soaking my jeans!

So, please, if you have a bathroom (which I’m guessing at least some of you do) please make sure there’s a towel or a Dyyson Air-Blade, or at least a fairly absorbent cat in there.

What do you do when you realize you’ve washed your hands in a bathroom with nowhere to dry them? Unleash a wrath that would make the Old Testament God blush?