I try to post as few pictures of bathrooms as possible.  I have high standards for my blog site and even I will not pander to the demands of the general population regarding bathrooms.  I do make exceptions, however, when I feel that there is socially redeeming value to a bathroom.  Of course, my own bathroom at home is off-limits to any postings, regardless of the calls I get to make that space public internet information.

On one occasion, during the Great Blog Trip Westward, that took place late last summer, I did write a blog and post a photo about a public bathroom.  I checked my site stats to see how that blog went down with my fans and I was disappointed in the height of my bar graph.

Lost in a deep depression, I vowed that I would not blog about bathrooms unless it was absolutely necessary.  Well, that time has come.  Below, you will see a photo I took this afternoon of our bathroom in our Paris hotel room.  This is a very nice room.  We have two balconies and a drop dead view of the front facade of St. Sulplice Church.  It’s a very old church and it played an important role in the narrative of “The da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown.  There is a line on the floor of the nave that was, at one time, the Prime Meridian before it was moved to Greenwich, England.

But I digress.

I really like our bathroom.  It has a bathtub and a regular shower head as well as a hand-held shower.  The white tiles and floor are clean (the whiteness make it easy to spot little bits of dirt).

When I first went into the bathroom, I was struck by the large wooden beam that is placed in a diagonal fashion above the toilet bowl.  I can sort of get what they were going for, you know, the hand-hewn beam thing adds a bit of rustic nature to an otherwise pure white room.  I mean the room is so bright and white, one could perform minor surgery in there.  The only downside to this is that white is my least favorite color.  Actually, it probably isn’t a ‘color’ in a scientific sense, because white implies the absence of all other pigments.  I’ll let you work out the argument about white on your own.

A day or so ago, I stood in the doorway of the bathroom and looked at the beam.  I could see real possibilities in the thing.  Beside the fact that I bumped my head on it while trying to urinate is really not part of this discussion…so you can drop any further thoughts on that.

But, as I stared at the wood, I began to see a great number of ways that the beam would be useful.  For example, if you had a bottle or two of Absinthe over in the Latin Quarter, the beam could be a handy thing to cling to while the city spun around you.  If you had three bottles of Absinthe, then you could cling to the beam to keep from falling off the face of the earth.  With a couple of well placed nails, you could have another set of places to dry towels or hand shirts.

And, lastly, if things got really bad for you here in the City of Lights, and there was no ‘action’ happening for you in the late night bars or over in Pigalle with the legendary French whores, then the beam could be just the right solution to hang yourself while sitting on the toilet.

It beats jumping in the Seine.  The water is freezing this time of year.