ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150096
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
Desperation is the most jarring
It was a scene I hadn't expected to see in downtown Roanoke, in broad daylight, on a weekday.
In plain sight of anyone passing on the street, a young woman relieved herself between two trucks in a parking lot.
As she did so she shouted something about "we're not good enough to use your facilities" to a nearby business.
I'm not a prude about the human body, I don't think, but I have to admit the episode rattled me.
It wasn't the woman exposing herself that was upsetting. It was her defiantly public bodily function and her words.
Her action was at least an affront to decency - which, I think, is based on a sense of morality. It was, in a sense, an assault.
We all know that most animals are smart enough not to soil their own homes.
This woman was doing just that. Only it wasn't really her home - at least not hers alone. The city is home to me and several thousand other people for several hours every day.
We work here, play here, eat here.
I hope it is not some sort of concealed Freudian admission to feel that one woman wielded tremendous power for those few moments. She took away a bit of security in my home.
We aren't exactly babies about such things. We know that in some countries, such public activities are not unusual. We've seen "60 Minutes" episodes about big-city residents who complain about people who relieve themselves on other people's front steps. Those of us, like me, who live out in the boonies know that the notion of "nature's call" can be taken literally, as a matter of fact. Birds do it. Bees do it. People do it - out of sight of other people.
But this was different from any of those scenarios in that this woman was doing her business not in secret, not attempting to hide, not quietly.
She even called attention to herself by shouting out a challenge. Though I saw her for less than 10 seconds, I interpreted her words to mean she had been turned away from the business when she asked to used the rest room, so she got her revenge by making a rest room of its parking lot.
Since I saw her for such a short time, I have no idea who or what this woman was. A prostitute? A drug addict? A drunk? A mentally disturbed person?
Somehow I didn't think so. She wasn't dressed to tantalize. She wasn't disheveled. And she used the word "facilities" - that most modest euphemism for the place where we conduct the business she was about to do.
Yet, there she was in about as immodest a position as a human being - in this part of the world, anyway - can find herself.
As this gnawed at me, I realized that while I was offended and shocked and maybe a little bit angry over what I had seen, I was confused, too.
Why would somebody do such a thing? Risk not only the disapprobation of strangers, but arrest?
In the end, that was what bothered me most.
The question I fretted over was not about the inappropriateness of this woman's actions or the appropriateness of businesses' "no public bathrooms" policies.
It was about desperation.
Thoreau said most of us live lives of "quiet desperation." Here was an act of loud desperation that certainly got my attention.
I realized later that I had passed a woman who appeared to be acting in desperation. I didn't think to respond to that. Indeed, I'm not sure even now how I might have responded to that.
But I find that I wish I could have.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB