Meditations on 12 Bits of Bathroom Graffiti

When I started grad school a few months ago, I was delighted to find that all the restrooms in the Humanities building have chalkboards in each stall. Presumably it’s a technique intended to cut down on actual graffiti, and it seems to work: Though the chalk is long gone and the messages are mostly in marker, those messages on the chalkboard, and the stalls’ walls, remain pristine (for some definition of the word pristine that includes surfaces sprayed nearly continuously with microscopic drops of toilet water).

Here are a few:

Lady 1: Well-behaved women rarely make history.
Lady 2: self-hatred [with an arrow pointing to the strikeout]
Ah, the eternal struggle between huge jerks and freshman women’s studies majors for dominance of the ladies’ room stalls. Who will emerge victorious?

I believe in Sherlock Holmes
Moriarty is real
This is written in multiple stalls in every single bathroom in the building I’ve been in. I think we found someone’s OTP … and I think Watson is going to be very disappointed.

❤ cupcake + pancake forever ❤ T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.
It is true that thug life primarily involves the enjoyment of cakes prepared in a variety of different cooking receptacles.

Written around the word “PUSH” printed on a trashcan: Don’t PUSH me, I’m close to the edge.
I relate to this trashcan even more than I relate to most trashcans.

I wanna be a smuggler. Snuggle by day, drink by night. ❤ — Penelope
Penelope, that’s like not even close to what a smuggler does. Like you might want to reevaluate whether this is the career path you truly envision for yourself, because it really doesn’t seem like you have that much potential in the smuggling field based on this graffiti.

Girls suck and are hella dumb, hence everything written on this gay chalkboard.
MAJOR blow to the women’s studies majors. Can they recover??

My man is goreous [sic] and kind. He buys me everything, dicks me down, & eats it like a 4-course meal. Just be patient. Great women deserve and will get great men.
Man, Oprah has really changed since she stopped doing her show.

[blacked out] Obama [blacked out] [blacked out] + [blacked out]
Racist diatribe censored by someone with a black marker and a speck of decency? Or magic witchcraft spell that ensured Obama’s reelection? The answer may surprise you. But it probably won’t.

Lady 1: Fuck Facebook, MySpace forever!!!
Lady 2: Why don’t you write something that matters?
Honestly, Lady 2, MySpace is due for a comeback any day now. Didn’t you hear Justin Timberlake bought it? He’s gonna make a billion more dollars, and then he’s gonna laugh at you, and you’ll be sorry you ever wrote this.

Boys will come and go but your c____[illegible] will always be.
Unfortunately, one of the words in this bit of graffiti has been … rubbed out.

If life gives you a thousand reasons to frown, show that you have a thousand and one reasons to smile.
Oh, fuck off.

(in teeny tiny letters in the very corner of the ledge you put the chalk on) Love the smell of period.
And the winner is women’s studies majors! A stunning comeback! Congratulations to everyone involved.

Previously: The Pub Trivia Bathroom.

Lauren O’Neal is a creative-writing MFA student in San Francisco. Her writing has appeared in publications like Slate, The Rumpus, and Corium Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter here.