The murky lobby of the corporate office tower in which I work has never once been enjoyed by any humans. It’s a dank, unnatural earth-toned, fluorescent lit monstrosity of architecture and interior design. The public can access this portion of the building, and the resulting smattering of commercial establishments never ceases to boggle my mine. Alongside the totally non-legit freestyle Subway and the deep-fried-everything Chinese place, visitors can peruse the latest in faux designer accessories, purchase all varieties of gift baskets, enjoy Mexican food purveyed by Chinese cooks, and even hop on the subway. It’s sort of a little mall, if malls could exist in the belly of the whale that ate Jonah.

It’s also where I get my haircut. Convenience and laziness collide to ensure that the repressed homosexual ex seaman is the man to sheer the locks.

Today was the day, so I went down to see if the barber was in. I had to wait. No problem, normally, but today, I had a slight urge to pee. Obviously, when you’re a man, the condition of the facilities doesn’t matter nearly so much, so I didn’t really have any reservations about stepping in to shake the dew off of my lily. I quickly stepped in, walked down the long, tiled hallway to the restroom, and turned left to hit the urinals. As I turned, I noticed that a man was sitting in the stalls opposite of the urinals, and that there were several personal type bags—backpacks, satchels and the like—sitting at the base of each stall. Whatever, I thought.

Then I began to think, “that’s odd. You don’t usually see the people sitting in the stalls.” I sort of glanced over my shoulder and, sure enough, there he was: Mister Homeless taking a Mister Grumpy.

As I quickly turned my head back to the wall, I noticed more of them in a row. All five stalls were filled with homeless men taking care of their morning business. I suppose that, in an effort to cut down on what I suspect was illegal or undesirable behavior, the building management personnel had removed the doors to every stall. Either that, or the doors were simply removed by the public at large and sold for crack rock on Fifth Street back in the nineties. I’m not sure, but the result was the same: the single most unpleasant restroom experience of my life.

The odor wasn’t so bad—nothing out of the normal for public restrooms. The place was clean-ish. But there was something so disconcerting about the scenario. I didn’t see anything gross: just men on their thrones. But I felt terrible for the fact that their morning bowl birth had to be on display for anyone who chose to stroll into that restroom. Truly tragic.