Bookmarks and Transitions and Public Restrooms

When was the last time you felt like a child?

I mean the last time that you completely forgot you were an adult, if just for a brief moment…

The last time I felt like a child was when an old man looked at my penis.

I know that sounds like a joke, and that’s because in some ways it is. But in other, more important ways, it isn’t.

Let me explain:

I was born in Cuba. My mom and I arrived to the United Stated in December of 2004. I tell you this because what matters to this story is the fact that I was and am an immigrant. I was at the verge of turning ten years old when I was introduced to the wonders of the United States.

Everything was astonishing to my young mind; the fully stocked groceries stores with seemingly endless supplies of fresh produce, warehouse-sized shops entirely dedicated to selling toys, television with what appeared to be an infinite number of channels, many of which played cartoons for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a motherfucking week. I promise I’m not trying to make it appear as though I lived in a total shithole in Cuba. We were actually pretty well off compared to the majority of people who live there, but even then, it’s a poor socialist country that is still reeling from the fall of the Soviet Union and embargoed by the biggest economic power in the world. There is no abundance in Cuba, in Cuba there are rations; you eat what you get and when you can get it. Here (in the U.S.) I was looking at avocadoes in December, wondering what kind of wizardry of science these gringos were using to keep these fresh out of season. As a child, the small impressed me, the big impressed me; everything I now take for granted seemed extraordinary and extravagant and awesome.

But perhaps the most stunning realization of how different this country was to the one I had left behind came when I visited Disney World for the first time. This happened about a month after arriving and the memory has become a touchstone for one of the most significant changes in my entire life. Much like some people associate losing their virginity with a certain song, or the smell of a perfume, or a look in your fathers’ eye, I have come to associate my arrival to the United States with Disney World. Not because I’m a fan of Disney or because I developed a fetish for charismatic rodents, but because I don’t have a nuanced recollection of the first month of my life in the U.S. – Everything was a blur at first; my developing brain barely making sense of such a drastic transition into a different dimension. Going to Disney for the first time is ingrained in my memory because I think that’s when I first realized what a drastic change my life had taken. A little over a month before, I was using a bucket to bathe in the dark during a routine power-outage, trying not to slip while I poured water over me with a tin cup. And now I was surrounded by Buzz Lightyear, and Space Mountain, and turkey legs – goddammit did I love America.

It was one of the single best days I’ve ever had… and then I went to use the bathroom.

I think nine is a reasonable age to let a child use a public bathroom alone in the early afternoon in a place like Disney. That might be bad parental instincts on my part, but I tend to be pretty optimistic about humanity. This is rather ironic considering what happened in that bathroom – As I stood in front of the urinal, I must’ve noticed a shift in the light or some movement just above me because I looked up to see a grown man staring at my nine year-old penis.

I froze. At the time, I did not know what was bad about this exchange; I just knew that for some reason, this was not right.

He stared at me for a bit longer, we made brief eye contact, then he walked away and I never saw him again for the rest of my life. As far as interactions with potential pedophiles go, this was rather tame. However, something stuck with me. I would not go as far as to call it trauma, but I developed a feeling of uneasiness in public restrooms that never quite went away. Even today I have a difficult time using a urinal, I feel exposed, so more often than not I end up opting for a stall. I do this even when attending sport events or concerts; I wait in lines to use the bathroom and pass on available urinals so I can have the thin veneer of privacy offered by the stall. Again, this is rather tame, there is no PTSD here; I don’t wake up in puddles of cold sweat from nightmares, drink heavily, or have problems with intimacy. But I did keep this one weird little quirk after all these years, all from a brief and uncomfortable interaction with someone who I’m pretty sure was a pervert.

The interaction lasted for mere seconds but it stood out so much in my mind that it now serves as a bookmark of sorts. Childhood, the shock of leaving everything I knew behind, arriving to a surreal new home; these coming-of-age events were profoundly important in forming who I am today. All these milestones reached in short succession, all these transformative experiences, and the first memory my brain goes to when trying remember when was the first time I actually felt like I had arrived, is that of a middle-aged man looking at crotch.

What the fuck does that mean?

That’s like creating a photo album for the most important events of your life, saving it in your computer, and titling the file “Some old dude looked at my dick when I was a little kid and now I’m weird in public restrooms.doc”

I guess it makes sense in a way. I was in a new world, most of my family was in a life I was not going back to, everything that felt like comfort and home was far behind me. Being an immigrant in a new land can be such a vulnerable and terrifying experience. As an immigrant one often feels exposed and out of place. Being an immigrant feels a lot like being a nine year old boy and catching a grown man looking at your penis… Isn’t that poetic?

Fast-forward roughly fifteen years to September of 2018. I was twenty-four and about a month away from getting married. The wedding day is one of the most important moments of many people’s lives and as a result we try to make it special by dedicating a lot of time and energy in preparing for the celebration. That often means that the months preceding a wedding can be hectic, tumultuous and a blur, much like the wedding itself tends to be. For me this means that my recollections of the days surrounding my wedding are as murky as those of my first month in this country. However, one night in particularly stands out vividly, a night in September when my wife and I went to watch a local production of the play Bent by Martin Sherman. The play revolves around the prosecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and begins during the Night of the Long Knives. Hot date night, right?

During the intermission I took the opportunity to go take a leak. The play was taking place in an old local experimental theater referred to as a “black box” and the bathrooms looked a century removed from the last update. The space was cramped; the two functioning urinals were about ten inches away from each other, there were no dividers, and to my horror, the one and only stall was closed off because it was clogged. I had already waited in line several minutes, people stood patiently behind me and the play was about to resume. At this point I was too committed and I had to see it through. So I approach the urinal, and as casually as I can, begin to do my business. I look straight ahead because that is the only acceptable direction to look at while using a urinal. As I finish, I feel a creeping familiar uneasiness. I look to my left and I see an older gentleman, on the heavier side, wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt and glasses. I looked to his face and see him staring unapologetically at my exposed twenty-four year-old penis.

He looked up at me, we made brief eye contact, and at that very moment I felt frozen. I know the exchange lasted but a second before he walked away. But to me that moment could have merited its own intermission. In that second I was transported back in time, I felt like that confused nine year-old boy in the Disney bathroom all over again. Years of irrational fears of exposure in public restrooms were simultaneously resurfaced and confirmed in one fell swoop. And now, much in the same way that I associate my arrival to the United States with a stranger looking at my penis, I have now begun to associate my wedding with an eerily similar event.

It’s very difficult to look back at the past and identify a single and precise point in which your life fundamentally changed. I think that’s because most change in people is incremental, it happens over a long period of time and we don’t often realize that we have changed until years into the process. So we manufacture ways to denote these changes because they seldom are as drastic and as immediate as losing a loved one or winning the lottery. The change from dependent child to someone capable of making a contribution to society may take four years, but we mark the accomplishment with a graduation in a single day. The change from head of a household to an elder in need of care may take decades, but we mark the transition with a retirement. That is to say that I’m not sure if I’m even a man yet, but what I am sure of is that in the future when I look back and try to figure out when I became one, I will look at my wedding as a point of reference, even though this was years in the making, and in many ways still a work in progress. When I look back further to remember when I was set on the path to develop into the man that I have become, I will look to the memory of leaving behind my home and coming to the United States. And it would seem rather curious that the thread that ties those two events together, the bookmark or file-name I will use in the archive of my mind for these memories is that of two men, at two very different transcendental moments in my life, both feeling inclined to look at my penis in a public restroom.

Seriously, what the fuck does that mean?

Sometimes when I’m in a spiritual mood I like to think that those men were messengers; twisted quasi-angels that appear in important moments of transition in my life. Sometimes I wonder if during the birth of my first child or the day of my retirement I will discover another stranger looking at my penis in a public restroom; a man who may look physically different from the previous visitors, but I will know that it’s the same being. Maybe we will exchange knowing winks and he will float away on glowing wings into the ether. Maybe as I lay on my death bed this stranger will come and visit me one last time and stare at my old and wrinkled member and then I’ll know it is time for my final transition.