Yesterday I found myself in a fine dining establishment in the heart of Scottsdale, Arizona, which is designated our ‘most livable city,’ a designation I heartily endorse if your definition of ‘livable’ mentions something about the requirement that every resident drive a BMW.

So there I am, in this fine and trendy dining establishment, and I find that I need to use the facilities, as it were, and I managed to find them, even though the fine dining establishment (heretofore known as the FDE, because I’m too lazy to type it out every time) did its level best to hide them.

I walk into a stall and discover these things:

– there’s a lot of pink lighting going on.

– in fact, the toilet is backlit in pink like some sort of confused low rider.

– which is sort of a good thing, because EVERY VERTICAL SURFACE IN THE STALL IS MIRRORED.

And when I say ‘MIRRORED,’ I don’t mean with frosted mirrors, or hazy mirrors, or whatever you might call something that might conceivably leave something to one’s imagination. No, I mean plain unvarnished MIRRORS.

EVERYWHERE.

It’s possible that even the ceiling was mirrored, but quite frankly, I felt, nay, I KNEW that my fragile psyche was not ready for that particular view, so I fixed my attention firmly to the floor, which was mercifully, and thankfully, covered in good old fashioned tile, as God and nature intended.

I was afraid to pull my pants down and sit.

But I had to, so I did, and thus was treated to the plain unvarnished truths:

– all in all, I’m pretty pleased with the way my haircut’s working in the back.

– the pink lighting is the only thing that kept me from poking my eyes out with my car keys because, if on top of everything else I had seen my face in full unvarnished light (with its full complement of fifty-two years worth of wrinkles) that would have been the final straw after….

– I got a panoramic look at my ass. Sitting on the john.

You don’t normally get that kind of wide-angle shot. I could have easily whipped out my cell phone and snapped a pic to share with you, but I refrained, mercifully, though I imagine if I ever got famous and someone hacked into MY pictures that would serve them right, alright.

I mean, I want to go viral, but not with *that.*

Suffice it to say that my posterior bears a striking resemblance to Hagrid’s dog, Fang:

Which is, come to think of it, not a very nice thing to say about what is clearly a very nice dog.

Of course, this whole frightening experience left me distinctly unenthused about continuing any fine dining, which makes me wonder about the FDE’s commitment to their marketing plan. It does not, however, leave me wondering about my next step, which will be out to the elliptical, forthwith.

© E. Stocking Evans 2012