At the service station

[TominMelb]

It seems service stations are almost as popular as planes as places to fin desperation. At least here in Australia, toilets are becoming less and less common at service stations and, when they are there, they are often not open at night time. Maybe this is a security issue in some way for staff, or it might simply be a lack of preparedness to spend money on maintenance.

Anyway, some time ago, just as I had bought some petrol at a station one evening, and was about to pay, a young man, I think probably about 20, who had bought petrol and had just joined the queue behind me, jumped forward and, while I was being served, asked the attendant where the bathroom is. Toilets are rarely called bathrooms here -m we call them toilets unless our main reason for going is to wash. But sometimes, especially in public, a person who is a little shy about people knowing he is going to the toilet will tend to ask for the bathroom.

When the shop attendant told him that they had none, it became immediately obvious that he was calling it the bathroom for the latter reason - he went back to the queue and just had to stand in line for his turn to pay (there were about six or seven people before him). He gave a nervous sort of smile when he was told they had no bathrooms (toilets).

He was wearing light blue jeans and a t-shirt, quite muscular as a 20 years old, and a lot of shifting from foot to foot, and faux-stretching in his place,were going on and, because I had paid, I couldn't really hang around the station in the shop too long to watch without looking obvious. But I did take longer than usual to drive off in my car, which was parked close enough to the store window, so I could keep watching his movement.

It was once again the sort of desperation that really gets to me - that extreme urge but trying not to let it show at all: but the small moves when a person would otherwise just be standing still, and one or two decent grabs of the crotch, left no doubt.

I still wonder, to this day, where he would have gone afterwards. It was the inner urban city and you can't just find a quiet dark place with no one around to relieve yourself. He would have had to have found a toilet and the urgency of needing one often gets in the way of concentrating on finding it.

[Brian]

Another great description with beautifully written details!

It makes me think that the young guy you describe may actually not have needed petrol for his car and merely topped the tank up! The nervous smile you mention when he was told the service station had no "bathrooms" (I love what you say about the distinction about what they get called!) would then have been a mask for various complex emotions. But the nervousness would have been genuine too!

I love such descriptions of sightings which stick in our memories. And the speculation about what might have happened afterwards.