Title: “How to suffer in a pubic bath”.
Author: Clara Pérez
Monologue
Only character:
- Sandra: She tells us about her experience using pubic toilets.
Single act
Setting: She will have to recreate with her movements and make the audience imagine each of the things she tells.
Sandra: Hi, I’m Sandra and I want to tell you an experience that I’m sure many of you have lived, but maybe you haven’t given it the importance it really has. Because I don’t understand what happens to us that every time we go out somewhere it is inevitable that we suddenly feel like peeing -she laughs ironically- What a scary moment and not just for the mere fact of doing our need, but to know how it is to suffer in a public restroom. Let me tell you.
You are having fun, sitting at a table with your friends, drinking a delicious cappuccino when suddenly you feel the urge to go to the bathroom – Tragedy face – No way! Horror, but you can’t help it, so you get up, tell your friends you’ll be right back, go to the bathroom, and head to that macabre place where you will spend minutes of anguish until you can return to the table with your friends. I know you are wondering what I am talking about? Well, don’t despair and tell me if I’m right or wrong.
You get up and walk towards the restroom, but when you are close you find a long line, you ask if they are selling any offer and they answer no, it is the line to enter the restroom. At that moment the suffering begins.
You place yourself at the end of the line, and the minutes begin to pass, it barely moves and you increasingly desperate squeeze your legs, you move from one side to the other, you start sweating, you feel that you are not going to take it anymore, but you have to do it.
Finally you are one person away from your turn and suddenly a girl with a little old lady arrives and says, “Can you let her in? It’s quick. How do you say no? So you squeeze your legs tighter and in a barely audible voice you say, “Yes, sure, let the lady in.
While you feel like hours are passing, when the lady finally comes out, you run desperately, grab the door and enter, to find that the floor is wet and you have to get to the toilet on tiptoe, with patience you make it, but of course, everything is wet, plus germs. Your mom taught you not to sit on pubic toilets, so you carefully get comfortable and begin to juggle to aim just bending down to the right place.
When you finally manage to do it, your wallet that you have hanging on your shoulder slips and almost falls to the wet floor, so as you can you rescue it before it falls, but you moved and now you have to juggle again to aim and just at that moment someone pushes the door, you quickly close it with your hand shouting, It’s occupied! And you concentrate again on what you were doing.
When you’re finally done, you stretch out your hand to look for the toilet paper, and horror! There is none, without wasting time you start looking in your purse, still juggling to avoid getting your clothes wet, in a really uncomfortable position, until you find a tiny piece of napkin, you take it, fold it in several parts, thinking that this way it will fulfill its function better and you dry yourself. Well, you don’t really dry yourself, but it makes you feel better morally. You put your clothes back in place, tiptoe to the door to get as little wet as possible and triumphantly walk out of there, walking gracefully past the long line waiting patiently or impatiently for their turn to find out how to suffer in a public restroom.
THE END