Can someone please tell me what is with the music playing in public restrooms? Why does someone think we are afraid of silence while we pee?
At my dentist’s office the other day, all I wanted to focus on—like anyone brave enough to have booked this appointment—was suffering through plaque scraping and skedaddling before the hygienist could upsell me a teeth whitening and a fluoride rinse. Instead, when my pre-cleaning Starbucks kicked in, I was forced to step into Studio 54.
If you're thinkin' you're too cool to boogie
Boy oh boy have I got news for you....
The music blared from the ceiling speakers, so loud my sore gums and I had no choice but to imagine my dentist, Dr. Manual Roberts, dancing in a 1970s Miami discotheque, wearing a gold lamé top unbuttoned to the navel and white polyester bellbottoms flaring with authority. Who else would have authorized this madness?
I let out a controlled stream, wondering.
Everybody here tonight must boogie
Let me tell you, you are no exception to the rule
“Oh, heck yes, I am the exception,” I muttered to the toilet paper holder, on its unfortunate last shreds.
This forced me to squat-shuffle to the cabinet, my sneakers scraping along the floor like an unintentional percussion track.
What choice did my bare ass have but to start swaying while my feet started tapping?
There’s no time to waste let’s get the show on the road
Listen to the music and let your body flow….
At that point, I couldn’t blame my arms either for flinging upward while my hips swiveled into the beat.
Time and space soon dissolved.
I shimmied all the way down, my pants briefly pooled at my ankles, then back up, my body transported somewhere long lost in time.
Under flashing lights and a spinning silver ball, throngs of people gyrated, parting for my entrance. I stepped forward in a one-piece, flared-leg silver bodysuit.
John Travolta met my moves—his iconic nineteen-year-old self—with arms extending through his white suit jacket.
“Shall we enter the competition now?” he asked.
“I thought you’d never ask, Vinny,” I chided. We clasped hands and spun, the two of us moving as one with the boogie woogie music, letting our bodies flow-ow-ow….
“Mrs. Siegel? Anyone in there?”
“Yes—just a sec!” I called, shuffling to the toilet before hoisting up my zipper.
“Just making sure you’re okay! Dr. Roberts is waiting to go over your X-rays.”
“One sec!” I called.
Geez.
Can’t a girl win a little competition on occasion?
—Heather Siegel
Heather Siegel is an award-winning author whose essays and memoirs mine the absurdity of everyday life; more at heathersiegel.net.