Thank you for not smoking, you prick

I have oft been compelled to do what is right.

After another carnal game of Badminton at the community sports centre I find myself in the basement washroom facility faced with the usual encumbrance of ‘wee and wash’ in unfamiliar territory. The cubicle walls are a collaborative artwork of bible quotes, drug dealer contacts and assorted testaments of love and sodomy. The puddle that oozes from the throne’s base precludes me from becoming intimate with the receptacle and I am forced to aim and fire out of range. After a slow trickling victory I notice a handwritten sign above the cistern. ‘Please flush the toilet’ flashes in a strobe-like fluorescence – an immaculate message directed at me alone. Of course I obey. I do not intend to disrupt the natural ecosystem of human waste. And you asked so nicely.

On the way out a sign above the wash basin (which is more of a giant ashtray peppered with human faeces) reads ‘Wash your hands’. The ‘please’ has been omitted - it is now a command. No suggestion of how rosewater hands smell the dandiest or how flesh eating bacteria can make your penis fall off, simply the naked imperative. Do it for your fellow countrymen. Do it or die. “You’re not the boss of me”, I half sneer at the basin. “How could you possibly tell me what to do? You can’t even take care of yourself!”

Underneath the printed lettering some-one has pencilled in something. It now reads: ‘Wash your hands, you scumbag’. Suddenly I am self-conscious and introspective, remembering all the times I sneezed without covering my nose, the times I smoked cigarettes indoors and the time I used my I-pod during takeoff and landing. I once threw a nectarine pip out of my window and rationalised it as biodegradable. Biodegradable? I could have killed some-one. I suddenly have visions of children, bleeding from the eyes, spontaneously combusting - disfigured by some new disease that will later be traced back to this very basin. Traced back to me. I am patient 0.

I wash my hands vigorously with the last sliver of soap, wishing that the hot tap hadn’t been dismembered for I could do with some scalding water.