About the prose and poetry of latrines

While walking for days in the park on Yauza (on Olonetsky Proezd), I saw this miracle of glass and metal, which somehow I can’t even dare call a toilet, a water closet (WC) and generally something base... How can it be! Rather, it resembles a center for cultural leisure, and the units visible through the glass suggest that inside there is a dream factory or, perhaps, a plant for processing... er... secondary products into something like that. Maybe in the latest generation smartphones or in sushi supposedly made in Japan, here my imagination fades. I don’t even rule out that all this was developed by geniuses from Skolkovo and contains a lot of nanotechnology, but I can’t vouch for it.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to check the miracle of technology for functionality; it turned out to be closed. The impression is that no human has ever set foot there, which was readily confirmed by local residents. They say they installed it in the summer and never opened it. And rightly so! Otherwise, irresponsible citizens will start using this booth for its intended purpose, they have such a habit, and that’s the end of beauty. And so it stands, decorates the landscape, and does not require maintenance.

Here I would like to note that such an attitude towards some of the needs of the human body is national in our country. I would even say sacred, or more simply, wild and barbaric. The most terrible memories of my romantic youth are domestic toilets. Either their constant absence at a time when they are vitally needed, or their simply primitive unsanitary conditions, especially in the south. How many years have passed, but I still can’t forget one latrine establishment not far from the city of Sochi, which you could only enter on tiptoe... No, I can’t, the memories still hurt my soul. The only things worse than this are the changing cabins on the beaches.

However, an iron proletarian logic was visible in all this. By not building latrines on principle, the party seemed to hint to citizens about the obvious baseness of their plebeian needs. The Soviet people were instructed to implement the brilliant decisions of the party, and not to waste precious resources on building institutions to satisfy their small and large needs. And these needs themselves were perceived as something indecent, as a relic of capitalism, like corrupt love from the political publishing brochure “Sex, Vice and Business.” Obviously, it was understood that as communism was built, these base needs would gradually die out until they disappeared altogether. Maybe by then the food will be canceled, or maybe the whole people will be. And why should he?!

I remember once, at the height of perestroika, a Czech, a Prague satirist and the author of a two-volume world history of toilets, came to our editorial office, which simply shocked everyone. Firstly, by the fact that over the millennia-long history of its existence, humanity, it turns out, has come up with not only “toilet” or “entrance” type toilets, but hundreds and thousands of ingenious and varied devices to satisfy this need. And the main thing is that the entire civilized world has long ceased to consider this need as something indecent, unpronounceable, and does not use barbaric euphemisms such as “to go to relieve oneself,” “to the wind,” or simply “to one place.” Because it turns out that all people are doing this, and have been for quite a long time, and nothing can be changed.

However, I'm not entirely sure that much has changed since then. Recently, I flew to a completely European capital on a completely American Boeing, although it was a completely domestic airline, and therefore the water closet did not work there in the old fashioned way. But there was a plastic bottle in the sink and, as the flight attendant kindly explained, when you do this, wash it off from the bottle. And there is no need to be indignant, we have been flying like this for a long time, because repairs are expensive and cost foreign currency.

However, it should be noted that there has been obvious progress in this area compared to the old days. If you look at the photo again, you will, of course, see a map of the park on the wall of the non-working toilet. This is very humane. Because if you have this very need, you can always choose the densest bushes and rush there in azimuth. If you're lucky, you'll make it in time.