Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
In the Toilet
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
“This must be the shittiest place in Prague,” I whispered. “Why are you whispering?” my wife whispered back. We were the only ones in the Museum of Historical Chamber Pots and Toilets.
I was whispering because talking loudly about human waste disposal is not something I normally do. A conversational taboo. Like revealing low self-esteem. Hi, I’m Noah. I have negative feelings about myself and I’m constipated.
At my wife’s urging, I am in Prague to exchange a sweet memory for a shitty one. I was recently fired. I’m unemployed.
“Even you can’t possibly fail at travel,” she teased me. “A thoroughly miserable holiday,” she argued, “is still a holiday.” Her words reminded me that travel is replete with vibrant smells, stirring sounds, cultural exploration, soaring architecture, splashy colors, majestic skylines, exotic foods. Distractions to take my mind off myself.
The ‘toilet’ museum displays 2,700 chamber pots, toilet chests, bathroom chairs, commodes, bed pans, slop jars, coach toilets and decorated ceramic toilets dating from the 15th century. One 18th century diary writer called them “chairs of cleanliness.” The notable ones include chamber pots made for Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln's White House bedroom, the Titanic, the Chinese Emperor Quianlong, plus toilets used in space travel, bourdaloues and caganers. The museum’s clean scent is like a bank of sanitized toilet bowls in an restaurant restroom.
There are old-timey water closets and fancy bidets to check out. Delightfully, back then bidets had nicknames: the hygienic little horse in Italy; the hygienic guitar in Spain; the violin case or ‘le petit indiscret’ in France.
The museum has new-fangled toilets. If the sanitation industry evolved and moved on, maybe I can. That’s what my wife thinks. I think shit is shit—and a flushed career is the worst kind of shit.
I loved my job. I loved looking at my business card: Assistant Urban Planner, City and County of San Francisco. With my city planning career in the crapper, I am looking into teaching high school.
Without a job title, I am a Kafkaesque man. An outcast without an identity. Ignored, unremarked, unremembered. Forgotten and forgettable. Shivered by this insight, a bit of vomit gags the back of my throat.
Outside, Prague is starting to fade, streetlamps beginning to shine. Shadows creep across the damp, darkening streets. Trees turn from green to black. In the distance, the Vitava River washes through the city. It’s as if the night is offering to hide me from myself.
I watch a city trolley gliding like an ocean liner through the cold night. It trundles to a silent stop, spits out passengers, swallows up new ones. People with purpose to their lives.
In Old Town Prague, standing in a plaza across from a concert hall, Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 "From the New World” bathes me in sound. My wife’s warm arm intertwines with mine.
On Prague’s twisty, cobble-stoned streets getting lost is part of finding one’s way. Dvorak wrote and rewrote his music. Kafka burned 90% of his writings, never finished his novels.
In the old world, my new world is materializing. Mapping a path forward, my fluttered breath softens my words into murmurs. I lean closer into my wife, and we walk.
