What I'm Most Afraid Of

I hate toilets. I get palpitations when I go to a new one. I despise the pipes, I am terrified of the cistern, with all its inner workings. Ballcock should be a comic word but it’s not, its horrorfull. The flush is a vortex into hell. Anything slightly different, deviant is despicable. French toilets are the worst. I thought travelling would cure me but it just meant I had miniature nervous breakdowns every time I needed the loo. Possibly that’s also why much of my away was spent trekking. It wasn’t just to see the amazing landscapes, plants and animals, it was so I could toilet alfresco. So much more civilised to go behind a bush.

Toilets are the only time I am jealous of a man’s anatomy. They don’t have to physically connect with what they’re pissing into. I never thought I’d suffer from penis envy! Mind you, there’s a lot to be said for hovering and it’s good for your gluts too. And poor men; they have to use urinals, which are another level of disgustingness.

I have to get to know toilets, make their acquaintance. The first visit is always the scariest. After this I always try to use the same cubicle on return visits. As Kylie said, ‘better the devil you know’.

I dream about toilets a lot. They are often nightmarishly distorted; very big, very small, very full or put in the wrong places, like living rooms and conservatories. I hate wild, unplumbed ones, in streets, in skips and most disturbingly in sculptures. Who puts a lavatory in their art installation? What evil is that?

My phobia has crept into my fiction from time to time. I once set a ghost story in a school loos and was very pleased with the eerie atmosphere with its ‘intricacies of pipes’. I got feedback this wasn’t frightening and I had to remind myself that my loathing wasn’t universal.
It’s not as weird as buttons, it’s not as understandable as clowns, it’s a pain in the arse, literally sometimes. But what would we be without our weirdnesses? I can’t think of anything more mundane than a perfectly adjusted person.

 

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