I like Alex Dering's take on Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's clumsy attempt to form a rump caucus in the men's restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport:
For all the men in the audience. Does the description of Larry Craig's actions sound like anything you would do in a public bathroom? I'm pretty sure the gay, the straight, the bi-curious, the hetero-transmetro-vanilla, the unsure, are all gonna answer the same way: "When I use a public bathroom I make no eye contact with anyone. I put the maximum amount of empty space between me and everyone else in there. IF, and I mean IF, I have to use the stall next to someone, no part of my body -- no foot, no hand, um, no non-foot or non-hand appendage -- goes anywhere near the boundaries of my stall. I try to touch as few things as possible." There's exactly one reason to look through the crack in a stall door. Two actually. (The second is if you're looking for the little Amish boy who may have seen you ice a cop.)
Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post offers his own rest-rule:
The key one, as I understand it from many years of being both a man and someone who uses restrooms, is Do Not Talk To Another Man Unless You Are On Equal Footing. What this means is, for example, that you don't talk to a guy who is at the urinal unless you, too, are at the urinal. If he's at the urinal and you're over at the wash-basin, you're not on equal footing. Most men understand this rule instinctively. Clearly this should be a major story in tomorrow's Style section.
Achenbach threatens the social order by suggesting that any form of talking is acceptable. I agree with the makers of the machinama Male Restroom Etiquette:
Speech is your enemy. Never ever under any circumstance say a single word while in a bathroom. Not to a friend. Not to a lover. Not to Jesus himself.
