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Sunday, December 18, 2005
Tabada: Base instincts
By Mayette Q. Tabada
Matamata
Though his name escapes me now, I’ll always remember the author of a book on Russia.
To see the real Russia, the author advised a visit, not to her museums or churches, but to her public baths.
The act of stripping connotes for many people a dropping of artifice, a return to the natural and true.
But to my easily abashed younger self then, disrobing seemed less fearsome than the scrubbing and scraping that goes with private absolutions—in full view of neighbors so similarly exposed.
Why such reticence in a countrywoman of Arroyo, Garci, Bolante and other public launderers of private grime?
There lies probably the difference between the Russian and the Filipino: the former casually expunges dirt in full view of others; the latter indicates he was around recently by the mess that’s left behind.
None too tidy as a people, we nevertheless are souls of iron discretion, careful not to be caught in unspeakable acts.
If you still don’t agree, take that nameless author’s advice and step inside any public toilet in the country. Unmentionable horror? Existential miasma? Pinoy kasi.
These days, refinements of our lifestyle have led to the popularity of pay-per-use comfort rooms that comfort, not assault, the user. Yet I still rue the labor wasted to maintain CRs in clocklike, germ-free order.
A recent experience made me realize though that the alternatives of CR nannies are also far from palatable.
Located in a commercial building, this comfort room oozed difference with a capital D. For one, I had to get a key from the guard to unlock its barrel-bolted heavy locks. Before entering, I double-checked with the familiar icon in the old-fashioned A-line skirt to be assured I was entering the women’s CR, not a bank vault.
Modern, muted, expensive. The sign enjoining the visitor to “observe cleanliness” was not out of place in this sanctum. In fact, I had to remind myself I had my last bath only a few hours ago and deserved the privilege to tiptoe inside a cubicle.
Before I could unzip though, there were other instructions left for those uninitiated to the business of answering the call of nature in modern CRs: “sit properly on the toilet bowl…do not squat…flush after every use…do not spit on the floor.”
Directions also helpfully spelled out how a general rule had to be executed. Told to “dispose sanitary napkins,” the reader got this useful suggestion: “throw it in the waste bin properly.”
Thoroughly unsure now if I remembered how to do my thing “properly,” my kidneys fortunately took over.
After scrubbing like a surgeon about to carry out a marathon operation, I held my dripping hands to the dryer and the sign that barked: “Use this properly…You are not allowed to dry anything in this dryer except your wet hands.”
I leaped back, stunned. How did this dryer detect I was sweating profusely like someone whose last visit to the confessional was during her first communion? Were there hidden cameras monitoring the increased condensation at my hair roots, my pulse rate, pupil dilation?
After I had scuttled out of there and had safely returned the key, I casually asked a friend working in the complex.
Me: You know those Italian marble washbasins in the CR?
Friend: Italian?
Me: (sound of assent) Michaelangelo must have used the same stuff to sculpt his David. I’m just curious why anyone would hang a nearby sign asking ladies “not (to) throw food, tissues, strands of hair” down the drain? The marble alone makes me want to converse in Italian with it, if I knew any Italian at all.
Friend: A locator once regularly demonstrated in the CR how clients could grow new skin on old faces.
Me: Illegal medical experiments?
Friend: Out of the clogged drains, they recovered enough skin to upholster an elephant herd, down to the fourth generation.
Do we get the public servants and toilets we deserve? Maybe, but I don’t have it in me to extract the answer at the bottom of our public drains.
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 0917-3226131)
(December 18, 2005 issue)
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