Tuition Well-spent

Iridescent Lake, 11,913 feet

08/23/2006

Miter Basin, Sierra Nevada

Choose a campsite where there is water. The water lapping the lakeshore or pouring over the boulders in the nearby creek will hide the nighttime sounds which startle you in the untouchable darkness: the leafs rustling in the cold wind, the mice skittering through the undergrowth, the tent flaps gently bellowing, the unknown somethings that fuel your wild imagination. The sound of the water will induce perfect sleep as you retreat into the womb that is your sleeping bag.

At some point, though, usually between the hours of 2 and 3 AM, when the constellations have shifted into unfamiliar orientations, you will need to exit the tent to pee. You stumble into the darkness and gasp. "Oh, my goodness!" you say. The innumerable stars and their coalescence into the Milky Way articulate what you have always known but could never say, that God has carved into in the palm of His hand. So you pee and go back to bed.

Speaking of peeing, at UC Berkeley there was a building called Dwinelle Hall. This is where I had my English and anthropology classes. Most of the students who frequented Dwinelle Hall had beards.

The men's restroom in the basement of Dwinelle Hall had a huge line of urinals. In fact, my friend Clifford told me it was the longest line of urinals in the world. Dwinelle Hall was built many decades ago during a time when bomb shelters were considerations in building design. The architects figured that if hundred of students needed to seek shelter you would need lots of urinals. This all made perfect sense to me. People have to pee. Especially during aerial attacks.

When Clifford took me into the Dwinelle Hall basement I was aghast. There was a line of 47 urinals lined up against a wall which was about 100 yards long. They were sparkling white and clean like military personnel going to a formal affair. They all had those hockey puck shaped white deoderizer things over the drains:

(not the actual line of Dwinelle Hall urinals, but you get the idea)

One Friday night after a movie, Clifford and I loaded up with a liter of soda and waited about an hour or so. We snuck into Dwinelle Hall and ran down the echoey stairwell which smelled liked mothballs. We made our way into the men's bathroom in the basement. We flipped on the lights and each ran to opposite ends of the urinal line-up. We called out to each other: "One, Two, Three!" We then proceeded to sashay like ballet dancers from one urinal to the other. We would pee just a small amount into each urinal then move on. Mind you, we wasted a lot of pee on the tile floor, but it was tough to turn on and off so quickly. I moved right and Clifford moved left and somewhere around the halfway point, at urinal number 23, we ran into each other. We performed a nifty pirouette (which we had choreographed earlier while drinking the sodas) then continued on our way. We both finished with pee to spare. It was glorious.

We then zipped up, turned off the lights and returned to our dorms where everyone was eating pizza and watching David Letterman.

Years later I returned to Dwinelle Hall to show Sam, Max and Henry the parade of urinals. The building had been remodeled, however, and the bathroom seemed to be absent. My boys were so very disappointed. They had been anticipating this visit for weeks.