Guernica, March 2018
Illustration by Ansellia Kulikku.
"He was a bathroom talker. It didn’t matter if you were in the stall and he was at the urinal, or vice versa or any other combination thereof, he was perfectly comfortable conversing with whoever walked in. It could have just been his personality. But it could also have been that he was an older man—I believe somewhere in his sixties—and if you’ve ever spent time in the YMCA men’s locker room, you’ve learned that such old men are shameless.
However he became the way he was, it meant that I would see him a few times a week, passing in the hallway, waiting for the elevator, taking a piss. And so a continuing conversation developed in that way."