by Helen Dewitt
The problem is that life is so different from fantasy. In a fantasy you can try out a toilet bowl as part of the picture, and if it doesn’t work you can just relocate to the kitchen. In life, if you knock a hole in the wall of a disabled toilet, that hole will go right on being there until you brick it up again. If there’s a toilet you don’t care for, someone is going to have to physically disconnect and remove it to get it out of there.
“Look, Joe,” he told himself. “Like it or not, the toilet has got to stay. They are legally obligated to provide that toilet for disabled persons in the building. If you take it out, you’ll be breaking the law.”
THE GUINEA PIGS
Meanwhile, out in the company, twenty results-orientated individuals were thinking I don’t believe it.
And fifteen of them were thinking guiltily that they knew why the company had decided to do it.
Fourteen of them were suddenly thinking Nah. OK, I may have stepped over the line, but I’m nothing compared to Ed Wilson.
Five had a clear conscience. They just thought Ed Wilson. That’s what it is, it’s Ed Wilson.
And Ed Wilson thought, This is all because of me.
One thing about results-orientated individuals is that they are highly competitive, which means that they are always alert to the possibility that some other individual may be achieving better results than they are. The conclusion everyone drew was that Ed Wilson must be really out of sight. They knew he was good, but they didn’t know he was that good. Otherwise no way would Steve Jackson have shelled out for something like this. If someone was egregious enough that something like this was necessitated, and he wasn’t out the door . . . hoo boy.
EARLY DAYS
In later years, when it got really big, one of the things people couldn’t really get their heads around was how it got off the ground in the first place, given the nature of what Joe was actually providing in the early days. In the form it ultimately took, sure, whatever your personal views on the legitimacy of a service of this nature you could at least see what it was that might appeal to people. Let’s say you could see what might appeal to people who were prepared to avail themselves of something like that. But people would try to set the scene, they’d try to imagine the set-up with the toilet just there because after all it was in a toilet cubicle, they’d try to imagine some guy coming in to try it out, and the mind just boggled. Even so, if the setting had been the only problem they could kind of see how you could get so you could just not notice it. But the thing people really had a hard time with was those first three weeks, before Joe cracked the packaging problem.
There was once a classic joke on the Bob Newhart Show in its heyday about a deodorant called Armpit, and something about the product as Joe initially introduced it to the world reminded people of Armpit. How could anybody go into a toilet stall and just wait for the naked half of a half-naked woman to come through a hole in the wall ass backwards? Nobody could see why something like that wouldn’t kill the project stone dead. Apart from anything else, it was insulting to the people meant to be using it. The message something like that sent was “You’re so desperate you’ll take anything. And I mean anything. So screw you, Bozo.”
The fact was that people were so used to all the features that everybody later came to take for granted that they couldn’t really recapture the whole novelty of the situation. It was like trying to imagine what it was like in the days when flush toilets were aspirational.
Mike Newsome was one of the original guinea pigs, and as he said later he was initially skeptical. If you’re in accounting, it’s your job to be skeptical, and that’s not something you can just turn off. The way Mike initially saw it was that it was some gimmick to deflect legitimate requests for pay increases. Or it was some cock-eyed motivational guru-type plan. Next thing you knew they would have them all out in the woods banging drums. Or somebody had decided they had to do something to appease the feminists, and this was what they had come up with.
Still, when the message came up on his screen the first time he went along to the disabled toilet, if only to satisfy his curiosity. Because frankly he couldn’t believe they were serious. He had seen some pretty dumb things in his time, but this took the fruitcake.
Anyway, he had gone along to the disabled, and closed the door, and sure enough there was a dispenser beside the toilet paper containing a supply of condoms. Then a panel opened in the wall.
Well, it was for real, all right. And his reaction was exactly what people would have predicted who would also have predicted that the show would fold on day one. The total absence of packaging was a real turn-off. Mike had this impulse to pat the girl on the behind and tell her to go home, except there was no way to communicate with her. Where did they get them anyway? So he just stood there with his hands in his pockets. For some reason the fact that you were just looking at a wall, where ordinarily you would have seen someone’s shoulders and head, made you aware that on the other side of the wall was someone’s shoulder and head, the head of someone you had probably actually seen around the office. On the other side of the wall someone was just waiting for you to get on with it. For some reason, maybe it was something to do with the tiles and the stall and the bare functionality of the environment, something about it made him think of a concentration camp or something. It kind of gave him the creeps.
His other reaction was also exactly what people would have predicted, which was that this had to be aimed at people who were so desperate they’d screw anything that moved, and weren’t too particular about the movement. In other words, Ed Wilson. It was something put together by someone with no class, for someone with no class. In other words, Ed Wilson. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised Mike to find that management had let nineteen other guys use the facility purely to camouflage an exercise in Ed Wilson containment.
Anyway he just stood there, realizing he was going to have to do something, and also that the one thing he couldn’t do was go around to the Ladies to say case dismissed. From what he could see, this was absolutely typical of the half-assed way the thing had been set up. It didn’t seem to have occurred to anybody that if for some reason things didn’t go according to plan, there could be a need to get the message across. All they would have had to put in was a light switch with some prearranged signals, or a slot with some preprinted messages, but no, that was too easy. So that was part of it, just the sheer aggro of the fact that there was no other option available. And then, when he thought about why it was giving him the creeps he realized it was a knee-jerk reaction with no real justification in reality. It was a free country. Nobody was making anybody do anything they didn’t want to; in fact the company was probably paying a lot of money to compensate them for their time. Besides. This was something experts had determined was helpful in increasing the productivity and job satisfaction of male employees. Wasn’t there a chance that these guys were on to something?
Because let’s face it, whatever else you might think of Joe, he’d really done his homework. The guy knew his stuff. All this research on baboons in captivity—you can’t just shrug something like that off. And it suddenly occurred to Mike—of course, later he realized he was giving Joe too much credit, but this was what he thought at the time—that maybe it was clinical and unvarnished for a reason. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be erotic. The point was not to plug into whatever mental trip someone might want to be on, the point was to provide a physical release for physical needs.
And then he thought Well, since it’s there.
So he set aside his skepticism for the moment and availed himself of the facility. It was quite a strange experience in some ways. Still, it was enjoyable enough for what it was.
Anyway, almost straight away he noticed that he was experiencing an unusual sense of well-being. He hadn’t been aware of his attention straying while he was trying to concentrate, whether to sex or to anything else, but for a significant period of time afterwards he felt more focused on the job in hand than he had for a long time
.
Also, instead of hurrying away after work to go to the gym, he ended up staying an extra hour to finish off something that had been pending.
Obviously somebody knew exactly what they were doing. They had worked out that the human male animal needs a release. Even if he isn’t actually aware of it, getting that release would improve his performance. You had to give them credit for going ahead with something a lot of people would consider unorthodox. They had probably come up against a lot of skepticism before people had had the chance to experience first hand just how helpful it could be.
It later turned out that seventeen out of the first twenty responded in exactly the same way.
They went in expecting something hot and found the reality fell a long way short of their expectations. But there was no way to tell the girl to go away. And while they were mulling that one over, and thinking it was so crude no one but Ed Wilson would see anything in it at all, they would suddenly remember all the information they’d been given on the baboon in captivity. They would realize that the clinical, unerotic environment was there for a reason. And they would remember that experts had determined that the male animal performs best if certain physical needs are given a release.
Being competitive, results-orientated individuals, they took a professional approach: If something will improve your performance, go for it.
What about the other three?
Well, two out of three wanted nothing to do with it.
The third was Ed Wilson.
TAKE OFF
Pete was one of the men who wanted nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of crazy people out there; who was there higher up in the organization who would be crazy enough to listen to them? And no matter who was that crazy, the obvious question you had to ask yourself was, is this something I want to be seen to be involved in? Is this something I even potentially want anyone to know I had anything to do with? Screwing someone from behind in the disabled john? To say this was a question you had to ask yourself implied that there was a possibility in a million years that you would be that dumb. But he had kept his counsel to himself, because this is the kind of thing where if anyone does it other people can’t afford to be seen to disapprove.
What he actually said was that he was in a relationship. The fact was that even if it hadn’t been a stupid idea for other reasons it would not be a good idea for anyone in a relationship. Not that he noticed that stopping some of the others. But if you’re in a relationship it’s important not to have anything you would rather the other person didn’t know, because sooner or later they will sense that something is going on. Also, there are some things that there is no point expecting a woman to see in the light you might see it.
As far as he was concerned it was offered as a purely physical convenience, to be availed of in the spirit it was intended. Questions of fidelity would not really apply in that kind of situation. But if you were to try to explain that to someone you were serious about you would be wasting your time. Anything you might say to show why it wasn’t infidelity would only make matters worse. You might think a woman would get upset if you fell in love with someone else, and that it would be completely obvious that screwing someone through a hole in the wall was not a meaningful activity in that context. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. If you know what’s good for you you’ll leave well enough alone.
Besides, if you’re actually in a relationship it’s important to be able to satisfy the needs of the other person.
He wouldn’t have minded trying it just once, to see what it was like, but safety first. You never know where there may be a concealed camera these days. You can’t be too careful.
In his opinion this attitude was justified after just one week.
It was getting on for 11 o’clock in the morning, everything pretty much as normal, a day like any other day, when suddenly the fire alarm went off. It wasn’t the time of day when they usually had drills, and at first everyone just assumed it was a mistake, but it kept going, and finally an announcement was made telling everyone to get out of the building. So they all cleared out of the building and stood around on the lawn, and after about fifteen minutes a car turned up, and the guy who had explained about the facility got out of the car and entered the building. He was gone about ten minutes, and then he came out and told everyone they could go back to work.
Later word started to get around. What had happened was that some asshole had tried to ski off-piste. Lose the condom. Or go anal or something. And the lightning rod had set off the alarm. Once that happened, apparently, the cubicle could only be opened from the outside. The anonymity of the offender was preserved by clearing the building of all other personnel, while a representative of lightning rods came to reprimand the individual and inform him of the suspension of privileges he had incurred.
At first everyone had just assumed it was Ed Wilson, but it turned out Ed Wilson was actually out of town, so nobody knew who the guy was. So you could say anonymity was protected. But as far as Pete was concerned, this was not a situation you even potentially wanted to be in. You could see where they would have to have something like this for the girls’ protection, but the potential for having your cover blown was such that he personally wanted nothing to do with it.
Bill was initially suspicious. He had already experienced difficulty in concealing the fact that he was gay; he suspected that this was really a covert ploy to flush out gay members of staff, while ostensibly doing nothing more sinister than keeping Ed Wilson under control. Even though he was suspicious he couldn’t help but be amused. The thing was so absolutely typical of the way straights would pick up on something introduced by the gay community and rob it of all the things that had made it worth doing in the first place. In fact what it just went to show was what pathetic sex lives straights had, they had to be really desperate. If it had come right down to it he might have been able to use the facility if he had had to, but he noticed one or two other guys said they were in relationships. So he just said he was in a relationship. He had a laugh about it with Luke afterwards.
Ed Wilson thought that people had overreacted to some incidents that had gotten blown way out of proportion. All he had done was make the mistake of thinking he was working with people with a sense of humor. But the way he looked at it was, if people were going to take it that way, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
EUREKA!
A couple of weeks went by. No one had complained about the toilet. No one had complained about the fact that there was no element of the unexpected. But it kept bothering Joe. He tried not to let it bother him. He went on selling the product with all the force and eloquence at his command, just as if he had unshakable confidence in a product that featured a disabled toilet standing by. But all the time it was there, at the back of his mind. Something wasn’t right.
A good salesman pays attention to his instincts. Even if a product is selling, even if the customer appears satisfied, if you’re dissatisfied with some feature of the product sooner or later the public is going to catch up with you. Or, to put it another way, a competitor is going to come along who has ironed out that particular wrinkle. If you can get to the wrinkle first, while building on the brand loyalty you have hopefully established, you’re way ahead of the game.
An ordinary salesman, of course, can only voice his concern to head office in the hope that it gets passed on to product development. Joe being Head Office, Product Development, and Sales all in one, all he had to do was let his salesman’s instincts carry out their war of attrition at a subconscious level. Finally it was just too much. Law or no law, something was going to have to be done.
For once, Joe made a point of not taking any paperwork home. He was going to take the evening off and just brainstorm for a while and see what came of it.
He decided to just take it one thing at a time. The first thing was all this nudity. For whatever reason, an already naked body is just not as big of a turn-on as one where there is some nudity yet to be achieved. T
he perennial appeal of the striptease relies on this very fact. Now, for purposes of anonymity it was obviously of the essence that female staff should not have any of their own clothes visible. Shortsightedly, he had been just assuming that meant they shouldn’t have any clothes visible at all. Whereas there was absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t be actually wearing a tight skirt such as he used in his fantasies—the type of skirt that wouldn’t ordinarily be worn to an office anyway, so there wouldn’t be a chance of unfortunate misunderstandings. He could just bulk buy a supply of short, tight skirts in manmade leopardskin, and they could be kept in some kind of storage container in the Ladies disabled, and the gals could slip into one before going on duty.
Once he’d cracked that one he wished he’d taken the time to confront the problem earlier. Because the toilet was another kettle of fish.
He kept thinking and thinking and thinking, but somehow the solution eluded him.
By this stage the rest of the guinea pigs had adjusted somehow, and the project had gotten through the initial rough patch. The way the guinea pigs saw it was, you don’t expect Vitamin C to taste like an orange. You take it because it’s good for you. And after they’d tried it a few times they didn’t really notice most of the features that at first had seemed strange.
Then Joe introduced the short skirts and the high heels and the whole thing took off.
But one of the things that people commented on later was just how little had been done to prepare people psychologically for the kind of outspread a scheme like this might have. In the early stages virtually nothing was known about the effect of using lightning rods on individuals whom the facility was meant to protect. The least Joe could have done, people felt, was to monitor participants carefully for adverse collaterals. One of the many things people couldn’t get their heads around was the fact that Joe had basically gone into business after a single study involving getting members of an office to play computerized Spin the Bottle. And frankly, to call it a study was stretching it. Basically all he’d been doing was seeing what he could get away with. Responsible employment psychology this was not.