Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | November/December 2005

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJIII

You Go, Girl!

Photo: Brett Uprichard

When the French installed self-cleaning, coin-operated toilettes along the chic streets of Paris, I thought civilization had reached its pinnacle. Here was a city of chichi, couture-clad culture snobs flushing away one more taboo by putting public potties on the streets for ordinary citizens. The image of someone relieving himself while traffic and strolling crowds swirled around him just a thin wall away made me grin with delicious irony. In the land of the gilded john, this was a technological and sociological breakthrough. By the time Urinetown, the Broadway musical, won its three Tony Awards in 2002, bladder liberation was a cause célèbre, reaching new heights as a social metaphor.

In the World According to Toto, bodily functions are a great equalizer, the color-blind, gender-blind and equal-opportunity beast that strikes when it’s least convenient. Home is where the toilet is, leaving travelers and the itinerant particularly vulnerable to the hazards of continence while on the road. Add to this the issues of sanitation, convenience, pushy people in bathroom lines, competitive male loo-goers and privacy, and a simple, natural act can become fairly gnarly. From the loins of this shared experience has sprung a culture of toiletology, and if you don’t believe me, go to Google and behold as 11.3 million links pop up.

His and Her toilets with motion-activated lights indicating up and down seat positions. Nature’s Call, a $3,500 to $9,500 flower-shaped urinal. The Toto with the “washlet.” The Hunter’s Special, a portable potty in camouflage. The Tokyo Toilet Map, containing cunning photos of the clean, the bad and the ugly, with instructions on “How to use Japanese style toilet bowel” (sic). Particularly informative is Australia’s enlightened National Public Toilet Map, hosanna for the hapless, with links and resources for the smallest continent’s incontinent. In one Internet guide, Bathroom Diaries, potty-heads around the world weigh in with their reviews of public toilets they’ve known, loved and loathed, complete with a cell-phone subscription service for directions while on the road.

But where is the pissoir when the urge to purge is greatest? We all have been there, minding our own business, music up and sunset sublime, when suddenly the cocoon of the car morphs into a savage battleground of the bladder run amok. Once, while driving from Wailuku to Kā‘anapali along Maui’s Honoapi‘ilani Highway, I found myself in gridlock, part of an endless chain of cars that snaked, inch by inch, to destinations normally reached in half an hour. For five hours, an accident near Lahaina completely blocked the road, creating a 26-mile traffic jam that moved in five-foot to half-mile spurts between 40-minute waits. With miles and hours between beach park restrooms and no opportunity to leave the wheel, luckless, white-knuckled drivers (and who but interstate truckers carry pee bottles?) like me were forced into bladder abuse. Finally, after four hours, I turned off the ignition in desperation, strode in the darkness to the car in front of me and borrowed a flashlight for my foray into the bushes.

Mortified, I noticed that the bus full of tourists behind my car had its headlights on, full blast. The driver took pity and turned them off. It wasn’t exactly a tailgate party, but understanding and compassion flowed, and nameless bonds were forged. I retreated mauka, into the safety of darkness, and experienced the most welcome minute of my life. No longer a desperado, I returned to my car a changed woman. When I checked into my hotel at 10:30 that night (I left Wailuku at 5:30), I didn’t know whether to high-five or bow to the throne.

No amount of cell-phone guides and citywide toilet maps will eradicate these hazards, even, as I discovered, while on the beaten path. Nature does not conform to convenience or need; it’s the other way around. Meanwhile, if you stay close to town, there’s always the library, bookstore and mall, and with special points for ubiquity and understanding, Starbucks, good old Starbucks.                            

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