I’m waiting outside this professor’s office in Ann Arbor for a meeting I have with said professor. He is late; I know this because, for the first time in history, I have arrived at a meeting on time. It was purely an accident. But his tardiness does not annoy me, because I’m jamming to “Taper Jean Girl” by Kings of Leon. I’m in skinny grey pants ($50), an extra-small white v-neck ($12), a flannel hoodie ($30) and black ankle boots (price unknown).

I decide that I ought to run to the restroom before our seance begins. I’m in the bathroom, and I’m adjusting my clothes and fixing my homohawk. Enter the professor I’m supposed to meet with. He heads, briskly, for the urinal and does his thing. Toilet flush. He walks towards the sink, fixes his hair and goes:

“I’ll see you in a minute.”

Seems normal, don’t it?

EXCEPT THE PROFESSOR DIDN’T WASH HIS HANDS.

I pop out of the bathroom and re-arrive at his office. He extends his hand for me to shake. And I, reluctant to shake his pee-hand, fumble around with my things so I don’t have to touch it.

GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!

There is something about men and a lack of bathroom decorum (slash, um, hygiene?) that really confuses me. I couldn’t help but wonder: What makes bad bathroom behavior?

Have you ever noticed that the ladies’ room often comes with that glorious extra part that’s located before the actual bathroom? I’ve never been in it, but you know what I’m talking about. In my hyperactive imagination, it comes with a mirror, rose petals, bursts of perfume, chirping birds, hors d’oeuvres and gratuitous classical music.

The men’s room, on the other hand, is like “pee and get the fuck out.”

One the thing that occurs in men’s rooms all over the world that blows my mind every time is this: guy approaches urinal. Guy does his business, flushes toilet, turns away from urinal, walks to sink. Guy’s penis is still out, in plain view to all.

REALLY? Are you telling me you don’t have two more seconds to just wrap it up? Hmm? Are you so busy that you can’t just fully tuck it back in during your stay at the urinal?

Do you want to know another bad bathroom behavior that gets on my nerves? Mmmkay, so one time I’m in the bathroom at Bass and there’s this guy who is fuckin’ on the phone while he’s on the toilet. He’s just in there, hanging out. Multi-tasking. At least he could have turned on the faucet. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being on the other end while the person I’m talking to is on the toilet.

I’d be like, “Look, you can call my ass back later when you done.”

Public bathrooms are the nightmare of my life, and I aim to avoid them where possible. The two years I lived in a dorm were the worst-est years ever. Ugh, I fuckin’ hated wearing those ass-awful shower shoes, and I equally hated showering where other repressed teenage boys beat their meatsticks. Me myself personally, I didn’t have any hot dorm-shower sex, but meatstick beating/sexualizing was so rampant that our floor would get messages from the R.A. warning us not to “do it” in the shower.

Imagine my pissed-off-ness when, in my senior year, my shared bathroom nightmare exploded. That year, I opted to live in this house FULL of obnoxiously straight guys. You know the kind: beer-pong-playing, football-obsessed, let’s-have-a-belching-contest-and-then-go-get-drunk-and-secure-some-girls type. Do not ask me why I lived there. Call it Sean Cody’s wet dream. I guess they needed a resident queer to tidy up and deliver funny quips at the drop of a bar of soap.

But the bathroom? OMFG!!!!! A HOT TRANNY MESS!

That bathroom was so ridiculous, you guys. Newspaper on the floor. “Babe” magazines next to the john. Pee-toilet. My favorite part was the towel that, because it had been there so long, was equally part of the floor AND the bathtub. But as the resident queer, I would put on one of those white outfits that bee-catchers wear and chisel away at the funk. With a blowtorch.

Bathrooms are private spaces. They should be clean, and so should you. Nobody wants to see what other people do or have done in the bathroom. Each morning, we go into it, ugly as all get-out, armed with funky breath, disheveled hair and then … POOF! Many of us re-emerge as presentable beings. It’s like that transformation chamber Steve Urkel had on Family Matters.

But even if you can’t transform, even if you MUST be on the phone while you use it … the least you can do is wash your hands! Beware of the pee-hand! Beware of the pee-hand!

Madison Moore is watching you.