Our new local pub is quite possibly the most average, middle-of-the-line hotel you could imagine.
You’ve got a couple of TAB TV screens showing the horse-racing. A couple of pokie machines bunged in the corner to guarantee at least some flow of steady revenue. The usual beers on tap for a Sydney hotel.
And subsequently, only a peppering of beer-drinking consumers at the best of times. Usually wearing their Sunday best.
Yet there’s something alluring about the incredible averageness of it all. Adam has long championed the “atmosphere” of the hotel, and it was at his insistence that he dragged both myself and Rick the Pimp along for a few evening drinks.
So it was beer drinking activity as usual, with the small exception of Adam’s “rule” that I wasn’t permitted to purchase drinks. This is an agreement we’ve arrived at for any hotel which provides your change on a tiny little tray, with the obvious expectation that you leave some coins there as a “tip”. I seethe when these trays are presented to me by a suspicious-looking member of bar staff staring at me expectantly, daring me to deprive them of their hard-earned extra reward.
Stiff. Tips are not the norm in this country and I refuse to bow to such a goddamn un-Australian habit. (That, and I’m a bit of a tightarse at times).
After accosting some terrified skinny bloke at a nightclub who presented me with a tips tray and screaming that I wasn’t there to subsidise their obvious loss on drinks revenue by the influx of drug dealers in said nightspot, Adam and I have agreed that it’s best I don’t deal with bar staff on these occasions.
As we were visiting the most average pub in Sydney, the toilets were conventionally difficult to locate. After we all spent the evening darting our eyes around the room and hoping we wouldn’t be the first to ‘break the seal’ and have to hunt down the location of the bogs, Rick the Pimp eventually caved in and scuttled away in search of them.
After taking a slightly alarming lengthy amount of time to return, he eventually reappeared grinning from ear to ear.
‘Toilets shouldn’t make you that happy,’ I warned.
‘No,’ he shook his head, and slugged back some beer. ‘I think I just visited the fucking coolest toilets in the world.’
‘I’m going to the toilets,’ Adam announced, and performed something which was halfway between a collapse and a drunken leap from his stool, towards the general direction of where he assumed the toilets would be.
‘How can toilets be so fantastic?’ I demanded of Rick the Pimp.
‘I can’t explain,’ he shrugged, and scratched his head absently. ‘They were just good toilets.’
We sat there for a substantial passage of time – I had begun shredding the beermats into interpretive shapes vaguely representing genitalia, and Rick was distractedly rolling his skateboard back and forth against the carpet with his foot. I’d began harbouring suspicions that Adam had rather selfishly disappeared into the toilets for good, leaving us on our own – akin to when a member of a boy band goes solo, leaving the other crap members languishing around in nothingness.
Adam’s head then bobbed into the room and I made a running break to check out these fabled toilets for myself.
And my Lord, were they impressive. It was as if all the averageness of the hotel had paid off, harvesting all the excitement of the pub into the toilets.
To access the toilets, you had to wind your way down a spiral staircase into the basement. Where the beige carpet of the hotel ended – the rolling, lush red carpet of the staircase began.
The walls were lined in mirrored squares and there were even small spotlights reflecting off everything. Even speakers pumping out dance music on the way downstairs. A mirrorball was all that was missing. It all felt like I was descending into a toilet version of Studio 54.
Many have argued that the Johnny-come-lately “minimalist” nightclub toilets are the way of the future. But what’s the use of a giant glass room where you’re not even sure where you’re supposed to pee, let alone take a dump? These toilets I was now experiencing were simply the apex of bodily functions. I would’ve happily paid for the privilege.
Even the actual toilet cubicles featured mirroring, and the urinal was simply a spectacle to behold. In fact, it all would have made much more sense if the hotel drinking area was swapped with the toilets (hygiene issues aside).
Shaking my head as I retreated slowly back up the spiral staircase, and wondering if I was simply so drunk that the toilets were just one of those things that remind you alcohol is actually a drug; the world upstairs seemed a much worse place now that I knew what I had to drag myself away from.
Looking mournfully over my shoulder at the mirrored designs, a large man brushed lightly past my shoulder as he walked past me to the bar, and then recoiled reflexively.
‘What, ya think if we brush skin that we’ll begin shagging indiscriminately?’ I demanded.
Joining Adam and Rick the Pimp once more, all we could do was look sorrowfully into our beers. The real world: it just doesn’t compare to a seventies nightclub-themed toilet.