“Where Should I Poop?” A Guide to CSULB

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What activity are human beings most private about? If you said sex, you’re wrong. If you said pooping, you probably just read the title of this article and I’m not giving you any credit for that answer. Even if you’re the most private person, you share sex with at least one individual: the one in your bed. I’ll bet you don’t share pooping with them. Fact: I’ve never pooped within earshot of anyone I’ve slept with.

          

Pictured: 6 places I've pooped.

I want to be in a private place when the E Street Band comes rolling down Thunder Road but I’m a college student. My breed is often crammed into dorms, houses and apartments like Katrina victims in the Superdome. In addition, I spend the bulk of my week on a college campus that plays host to over thirty thousand students. Combine these facts with a genetic inheritance that has left me with the metabolism of a jackrabbit, and I’m left with a lot of instances where dookying a shooter in one of CSULB’s over 300 restrooms (a figure I have entirely fabricated) is a must.

A freshman let loose on this campus, wet behind the ears and with a hard night of drinking behind him doesn’t know that beershits hit hard and fast. When the downtown push comes there’s no time to inspect the facilities, find them wanting, and leave. You have to know where to poop, when, and for what reasons. That’s where I come in. in Fall 2008 I came to CSULB with a humble goal, to test as many of the men’s restrooms as I could and pass my knowledge down. Without my expertise this fictional freshman could be left spawning a sewer trout in that bathroom near LA2 that smells like the homeless man who sleeps there on weekends. Knowing what to avoid is almost as important as knowing where to go.

The following facilities are judged with emphasis on the dual virtues of cleanliness and privacy. My expertise only extends to men’s rooms. I apologize to the females, but I’m sure you appreciate my decision to forgo testing the women’s facilities.

USU 3^rd Floor – Northwest Corner: With its central location this is one of the best spots on campus for a ‘tween class Cosby-drop. It’s cleaned like little cookie elves scrubbed it with tiny toothbrushes and there’s a chalkboard in the stall so you can leave messages for the next customer. Yes, you heard me right. I said “stall” singular. There is only one stall in the bathroom and it comes complete with its own sink and mirror. This means you can check your hair or see if you’ve got a bat in the cave without anyone else witnessing. No, I cannot guarantee complete privacy in this restroom because there are two urinals beside the stall. If you’re a real private type you can put the proceedings on pause while someone takes a leak. That’s not possible when there’s another dude in the stall next to you. In that case you guys are mates until one of you is done (I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but you can never exit a stall at the same time as the man who pooped next to you. Doing so would put a face to the bowels, destroying precious anonymity). The downside is that cell reception is terrible on the USU’s 3^rd floor, so you won’t be getting any text messages. I take it as a gift of isolation, an island of solitude in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, but I’m a romantic. If you cannot be away from your phone and want this level of class, try the new Hall of Science.

3^rd floor LA5 – If you’re on upper campus and you don’t have time to get all the way to the USU you might be tempted to use LA5. It’s a big building, certainly not as much of an earthquake hazard as LA2, so it should have some decent facilities, right? Wrong. There’s a reason the 3^rd floor men’s room in LA5 offers some of the best privacy on campus, because you run the risk of catching hepatitis the second you set foot in there. It looks like it was hosed down once in the 1970’s and since then has only been maintained with duct tape and chewed gum. It’s the type of restroom you see in horror movies where someone gets stabbed with a rusty railroad spike through a gloryhole. I once spent a solid 15 minutes in this restroom and not another soul entered. It was like having my own restroom, like being king, but I’d rather be a peasant in paradise than the ruler of a kingdom of shit. The SPA building on lower campus holds a similar disadvantage.

ET Building 1^st floor – Great bathroom if you’re on lower campus for that Rec class you’re slumming it in. It has ritzy light blue tiles, cleanliness, and relative privacy for a public restroom. Complete with warm lights and a lack of the shiny surfaces that make public restrooms so uninviting, it feels almost homey. However, there are as-of-yet unverified rumors of a one-occupant bathroom with a lockable door in the nearby DESN building. I’m sure most students haven’t visited either of these buildings because they lie in that no-man’s land of low structures across the street behind the SPA and that’s a crying shame.

The Library – Not to be confused with “club lib,” a fictional and idiotic place where sorority girls go to pretend to read before finals, the library is an atrocious place to poop. Not only is every floor’s crapper plagued with an abundance of foot traffic that renders even the most outside chance of privacy unattainable, they all smell like a mixture of old urine and the beach. This stench is due to the university’s waterless urinals, which are the single worst feat of engineering since mesh condoms. In addition, students use the hallway outside the restrooms for loud phone conversations, forcing you to hear their most intimate conversations while you wonder if they can hear every squeak and gurgle your own body is making. My advice is head to the nearby Macintosh building instead. The restrooms in MHB are surprisingly cozy, as long as you’re willing to brave the strange looks from faculty when you dip in just to evacuate yourself. LA1 is not a suitable alternative. It is a building with restrooms so atrocious that some have two doors, in order to make escape easier. You might as well drop your trousers in the middle of class because you will receive no privacy or sense of inner peace. Don’t be that guy. Understand your plight and fight it with knowledge.

             

This is what too much fiber will do to you.

I believe evolution is to blame for the secrecy with which humans poop. I’m no scientist, but it’s obvious that in the wilderness one would be very vulnerable to predation while pinching out a growler in the high grass. I would be in no position to fend off a bear with my pants around my ankles, regretting that breakfast burrito. Why a bear would be on campus, much less in the bathroom, isn’t the issue. The crux of the matter is that we feel vulnerable when we poop. We’ve all wondered who was here before me? or how long has it been since this toilet was cleaned? and that can suck the wind right out of one’s sails. I’m calling for an end to this tyranny imposed by low standards of cleanliness and complete lack of privacy. We have to take back pooping from the jaws of savagery. A man’s time in the restroom is a chance to loosen his belt and meditate on the meaning of life. That, or you can text the girl you were with last night. Just don’t let her know you’re pooping. That’d be weird.