Disclaimer: I own this piece of fiction, and it comes entirely from my imagination. If this sounds like any other, it is purely coincidental. However, I would just like to thank The Watched for one of her mentions of graffiti in her prose for making me think about why people write stuff on bathroom doors.

Authors Note: I submit this for you to read. Please note that this is rated at M and you should decide whether to read it accordingly. For the people who read it please review when you’re finished.

AN: This has literally just been written. I’d appreciate some feedback.

Reflections on Bathroom Graffiti:

The Pinnacle of Her Life

Why do people feel the need to deface public properties, feel the need to reassure themselves that they actually exist by writing on walls or scratching jokes or love notes on doors? It sometimes seems as if they are nothing, as if the only thing that will ever outlast them is those memorable words, slogans, obscenities that line themselves on doors or benches or walls. Do they ever understand that there is no point to this eventually futile exercise that happens in the five minutes between lessons or when the bell rings to signal the end of break? Who really wants to read the unimaginative scrawlings of a teenager who feels just like everyone else?

I mean; take her, for example. You might not even know her. You could pass her in the corridor without even noticing. In fact, you probably have – you might have seen a sort of worried-looking girl try to step out of your way, you might have even wondered what was bothering her (although I doubt you did) but less than three seconds later she would have been forgotten. Not even filed away under that ever-mounting pile of forgotten memories and instances. I mean, even your brain would have understood the fundamental issue – she’s not important. And I understand perfectly, we can’t remember every random stranger we meet on the way to biology.

Don’t worry – I mean it, she really isn’t important. She won’t be anyone when she grows up, not a lawyer, doctor, author, scientist, teacher, executive or anything. It’s not really an option in her case. And plus, she doesn’t want to be one of them. I mean, she agrees with her mother – what’s the point? Those type of people don’t understand the meaning of hard work, they take other people’s money for doing practically nothing. Plus, she’ll have to give it up when she gets married (if she ever does). She’s one of those really annoying people who can’t grab her cutlery quickly in the lunch queue, who drop everything on the floor and then scramble helplessly on the floor holding up a whole line of hungry and impatient people.

What she’d really like to be when she grows up is a pop star. She thinks it’d be so so so cool to be up on a stage singing for thousands, hell maybe millions, of screaming fans. But the thing is, she’s got an absolutely terrible voice. Well, put that down as a very mediocre voice. One of those people who didn’t even get kicked out of the school choir; she got pulled aside one day and gently ushered out of the music room. She told her mum, and of course her mother told her quite reasonably that the teacher knew if his students had any talent and wouldn’t have taken her away if she did. Besides, hadn’t she heard herself singing with the radio? She couldn’t keep in tune. A pop star? What an absolutely ridiculous idea. No daughter of her mothers would ever be in front of that many people wearing clothes like that. As good as advertising that they were bad women, prostitutes almost. No, out of the question. Besides her mother thought she had always wanted to be a secretary? A sensible profession, she couldn’t go far wrong with a job like that. It was respectable, and took in good money. There was always employment for secretaries. If only she would try and grow her hair longer…

So, she’s nothing really. She’ll never be in a newspaper, except maybe in a school photograph right at the back. Hang on, no she won’t. She was sick with the ‘flu when the school had it taken. In fact, she won’t ever do anything great. A mediocre person, in fact a slightly below mediocre person. She won’t ever write a book called ‘My Life’, or be in a magazine or even publish an article. In fact, she has really really bad taste – thinks that the girl in the local music store looks beautiful with those large hoops in those ears and wearing a pink and gold tracksuit. She doesn’t have pierced ears of course, she knows they’re bad for you and they get infected. She wants a boyfriend, anyone will do, but knows that boys are scary and always want more than she’s prepared to give. She doesn’t know this for a fact, she’s never had a boyfriend before, never even been kissed, but she hears stories and reads magazine headlines in the supermarket checkout. She wants to chew bubblegum, but she’s too scared she’ll swallow it and then it’ll stay for seven years wrapped around her intestines. She doesn’t watch popular series (they don’t have cable) but she’s addicted to black and white corny movies. But not so much that she cries when she sees them, which might have made her a bit more interesting. She doesn’t have any pets, doesn’t even like animals all that much, and she likes chocolate a bit too much for her own good. She has too many brothers and sisters.

Actually, there is one interesting thing she’s done in her life. In fact it’s the only interesting thing she’s ever done. But it’s so small, so utterly meaningless as to be quite boring and quite pitiful really. The pinnacle of her life, the very achieving moment that would have defined her existence for the rest of humankind was diminished, was set at: “I waz here” – scratched deeply into a cheap wooden door in the girls’ bathroom. This was what she aspired to, to make her being known beyond another blurred and unoriginal face in a crowd of others. This was her only achievement. Sad, really, in a way that means pathetic rather than distressing.

The only thing that she could do to make herself feel important, to think or at least believe that in years people would wonder who this person was and why she had carved the fact that she had been there into a door – probably by then preserved in a museum. They would wonder at humanity in general back in ages gone past, and wonder about her in particular. She could imagine lectures on her little epiphany –

“And long and eventful archaeological research has shown that this door, the famous engraved door, was found in what used to be the remains of a girls bathroom. In those times, women and men were segrated at every opportunity, which now days we have of course abolished seeing no reason to differentiate between the sexes …

Even more surprising is the fact that the door was relatively intact when compared to its surroundings. It makes us wonder who the girl was and what ‘here’ she felt the need to record as well as what moment for future prosperity…

Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask you again to please step back from the exhibit and warn you that photographs are prohibited. You may buy postcards at the exit.”

Of course she didn’t think of it in quite as much detail. Really she just liked the feel of the wood under her hand, the grain of it, the splinters stabbing into soft flesh. And of course, the ecstatic and orgasmic feeling of stabbing one of the blades of a pair of scissors into the door and tearing roughly downwards to form a streak. The first letter ‘I’ slashed and large. Then the quick overlapping strokes of the ‘w’ and the satisfying ‘A’, as well as he flourishing ‘z’. Then, crowded into the rest of the door left, the hurried ‘here’.

She wanted to be original, different. She though of just writing ‘I waz’, to look philosophical in a kind of cognito ergo sum way, but decided that traditional methods could have some merit. After all, wasn’t it the truth? She had been there, had been ‘here’ like she’d recorded. A writer of the truth, that was her. Besides, in the end wasn’t that all the truth she could offer? She knew nothing else. School didn’t have knowledge, it just tried cramming as much pseudo information into the heads of children as fast as possible, declaring them functional human beings and shoving them out of school as soon as it could. A huge factory of robots waiting to be given a stamp that said ‘normal’. And, of course, there was always a possibility they had lied. How could she know what type of rainfall would fall in the southern parts of tropical forests? She’d never left her home town in her life, except on a school trip to the city once.

Not a very smart one, on the whole. Probably slightly below average intelligence, not very social and constantly bewildered by what people kept throwing at her. Not really made for school, that one. Not smart enough to be one of the brains, those who either sat at the front of the class and wrote everything down as fast as possible with complicated diagrams and numbered pages. Or those who lazed around at the back and yawned, looking ready to die of boredom before the 45 mandatory minutes had elapsed, yet somehow impossibly scored 97 in each exam. Neither could she be one of the blondes, brunettes, butterflies who were defined by their hair colour and a random personality trait, girls who dotted there ‘i’s with little hearts or those who wrote nicely rounded large letters, pretty notes that were colour coded and never looked at again. People who laughed and chatted with the teachers, on friendly terms, who may not have done any homework because they were out partying all night, but still passed reasonably when it came to the crunch time.

So, let’s see shall we? Not smart at all, difficulty recalling information and at thinking ‘outside the box’. I wouldn’t call her pretty, although she wasn’t ugly enough to be picked on either. A blobby face and medium body. Not skinny enough to wear mini skirts, which was the latest rage at the moment. And she didn’t have any interesting talents or habits or interests which could have saved her conversation skills and made her some friends, as far as I know. Couldn’t swim, and had terrible coordination which ruled out team options like football, hockey or basketball. Her family really couldn’t afford to pay for unnecessary and ultimately unsuccessful sport lessons like tennis or squash. Maybe she could have done cross country, she was fairly adequate at running, but unfortunately they trained while she was stuck inside doing extra maths every tuesday.

I suppose she could always have rebelled at the exclusiveness of high school and of society in general, but she didn’t have much imagination really. Loud rock music and black clothes could have changed her, but her mother didn’t approve of that sort of thing and she wasn’t into that whole ‘teenage rebellion’ thing. Except of course, once. For one moment, when life became too unbearably average, too numb. Too slightly-less-than-normal.

Can you guess at what moment this was? Can you guess what was the ultimate outcome of this one defining moment?

Three little words. Three small words, carved into the back of an ordinary school door. Right after having pushed through a crowd of other girls, who either pushed back impatiently or who stepped aside politely (although their eyes were blank and already looking behind her for someone else). No one ever got angry with her. She wasn’t even important enough for that. Shoving her way through the mountains of talking, laughing, screaming, even crying (in the memorable case of a mascara wand and a jogged elbow) girls. Banging into the door on her way into the cubicle, hurting an already sore shoulder which would ache at night for months to come, the sound of the rusty bolt closing seemed like a small triumph in another miserable day buried in hundreds gone by and hundreds yet to come.

And then the sight of, for once, a graffiti-free door. And the sudden, impossible, nerve exciting thought that froze her brain and focused all her attention on the blank brown door in front of her. A burst of saliva in her mouth at the perfect space, varnished, newly replaced. The thought of being the first at something was too tantalizing to pass up, and ignoring what her mother would say if she knew, a pair of scissors were in her hand before she’d even thought to retrieve them from her bag. It lasted both five seconds and, simultaneously, an hour. Her first, and last, ever graffiti deserved proper attention, and she was determined to give it. She dug deep into the wood with her plastic scissors, little brown slivers floating away from her busy hands. When she stepped back, it was with an enormous and overpowering sense of empowerment and pleasure. She worried briefly about writing the words in blue ink actually inside the carving, to make the words really stand out, but quickly decided against it. She had no wish to disturb the clean purity of the untainted wooden letters.

Of course, the feeling of triumph couldn’t last forever. In fact, it didn’t even last five minutes. Life continued to wear down any originality, any achievements she might have accomplished, any dreams she might have realized. But throughout the next five years she’d spend at the school, every time she thought of that pinnacle that was scored forever on that bathroom door, a warm glow of happiness would suffuse her soul. Of course, she knew it was nothing awesome, knew it was nothing out of the ordinary. She knew how pathetic it was. But I cant say that the knowledge disturbed her much. Someone had to write down something on that bathroom door.

Years passed, and whenever she visited it, always that same cubicle, the actual view of the carving would bring a smile to a face that was the constant wearer of a worried frown. It somehow always looked better in real life than in her imagination, despite her anticipation and eagerness to see it. Well, she never did have a lot of imagination and I suppose that’s why. She loved to skim her fingers over it, trace the actual words and feel where the blade had cut particularly deep into the door. The carving stayed bright, stayed just as vivid as when it had first been done. It never wore down or got covered in dust, because she had poured her love into it, her misguided enthusiasm, her unfulfilled dreams and unworded bitterness. It probably happened so slowly that she never even noticed, which is just as well. It was truly the pinnacle of her life, it defined her whole existence. She waz here. She would always be here, if only in soul. She was not ‘another face in the crowd’ anymore. She had a secret, she had a mark. When she was gone, either from the school or from life altogether, some piece of her would remain behind.

And then, when one day she went in and say her carving as usual, there was something new. A dainty scratched arrow curved down from her statement, originating from a likewise carved question. She smiled, nearly cried. Maybe she would never fly in an airplane, maybe she would never travel around the globe and maybe it was her destiny that she would always be stuck as, at most, a secretary to some local businessman and then quit to become married to some rather less-than-average guy and have a few kids. Maybe she would work at a check-out counter until she was 30, and always remain firmly under her mothers thumb. Maybe she was doomed to fail all exams, and leave high school without a diploma despite years of hard work. But one dream remained, and it was fulfilled: she would always be remembered, if only by a door. She would always have been the first one to ever have written on that particular door. It was enough.

After deciding that she couldn’t leave a question unanswered, she spent a few more minutes with her blue plastic scissors again. Smiling a grin that reached to the very corners of her face, a grin that made her eyes catch the light in a way that made her slightly less ordinary to anyone who would see her, she left the bathroom. Maybe today she would tell her mother that she didn’t want to be the next-door grocer’s assistant over the summer, and that she didn’t want typing lessons over the summer. Maybe she’d even go to the library, where she’d never ventured before, to see if they had any books on business management. She quite fancied taking a few courses to see if she could maybe one day own her own shop instead of working behind the counter, or being the owners fat wife. She might even take up jogging. She’d see, it all depended on how she felt.

Do you want to know what was written on the door of the cubicle? Here it is:

I wAz here

An arched arrow led from that statement to a question below:

Who waz?

And then, a few inches below, in huge letters that ran alongside the width of the door, a proclamation that read, in slashed words:

ME

You should go see it sometime. I think it’s still there. But, really, why do people do it, why do they write things on bathroom doors?

May blessings follow in your footsteps,

Ethereal Kisses