Bog Standard

Tom O'Hara

I've taken a bit of an interest recently in toilet wall graffiti. I once read somewhere that toilet wall graffiti could be considered the purest form of art, since it is done neither for financial reward nor for personal acclaim. This is an interesting point, though one that only hints at the apparent complexities of the medium.

Evaluating these two aspects is relatively simple. As far as I'm aware no-one has ever been paid for scrawling above a urinal in biro in between the fifth and sixth pint of Blackthorn. You are unlikely to be commissioned by an advertising agency to come up with a product placement solution involving carving a loose approximation of your name into a wooden cubicle door. Similarly, you're not going to find one of these pieces in an auction room or on eBay.

A lack of ambition in terms of personal acclaim is more open to debate. Presumably, by writing your name, or that of the organisation, sports team or gang you belong to, you're gunning for some kind of affirmation in the eyes of others. The observer may perhaps be inclined to think better of you if they see you've daubed your name in between the pubes and toilet roll holders. And if they don't know who you are, maybe they'll wish they did. Hmm.

The thing that really fascinates me, however, is what the perpetrator is thinking or intending as they reach out and place their mark on the wall. Like the person who, in a pub near where I live in Bristol, wrote 'Nailsea badlands crew', really small, in biro, just above the urinal. I had images of some terrifying band of post-apocalyptic outlaws, riding across across a vast and arid plain on horseback, striking fear into the hearts of the people of Nailsea. Yet somehow this didn't sit with the image of the bloke I had in my head, rather the worse for the wear, one hand against the wall to prop up his drunken body, the other holding the pen, eyes screwed up in concentration as he spelled out the words in his head, hot piss cascading down the front of his jeans in a tragic misprioritisation that will only become apparent back in the bar, ten disgusted stares later.

And what of the single word offenders, the person who writes 'Fuck' or 'Shag' or 'Gaylord'? Why did those people even have a pen on them in the first place? How did they narrow down the entire English lexicon to one pithy nugget of cathartic expletive? Maybe it's just a simple territorial act, akin to a cat spraying in a bush to let other cats know it was there. Maybe they think, 'Right, I've written 'TWAT' in every pub in Hackney, so I've the got the whole place fucking sorted now. It's all covered'. I guess this might be an offshoot of tagging, that practice whereby you spray your name, or pseudonym, in such a way that there's not a chance someone will be able to read what it says, preferably on as inaccessible a piece of wall as possible. Take a train into London and you'll be amazed at the risks people will take to leave their illegible calling card every five metres along a length of railway. Again I think it's territorial, and the risk taking also implies that this is a person not to be messed with.

So is the same true of toilet graffiti? I've never walked into a pub toilet and seen someone in the act. I'd love to know what the person who wrote 'Benton is a spaz bender wally' looks like, but I know that I never will, that that opportunity has been and gone. There must be an element of risk involved, the adrenaline rush knowing that someone could walk in on you at any second. Your reaction if caught would surely have to involve some amount of shame, unless you were constructing something particularly profound or aesthetically appealing. You could maybe equate it to the mythical act of the 'danger wank', where, it is claimed, you phone your mum and tell her she has to come home immediately, and try and knock one out before she catches you in the act, thus eliminating for the rest of your life the possibility that you can ever look your mother in the eye. It's not so much a search for personal acclaim as for self-affirmation, of making yourself feel alive through risking public humiliation.

There are other explanations. Many would call it simple vandalism, an act lacking in any intelligence or merit. Others would suggest it indicates a troubled mind, that it acts as a release, or even a cry for help. Whatever it is that motivates a person to write shit graffiti in a public toilet, it seems a convincing argument that this impulse possesses a purity and a stylistic freedom that other art forms are simply no longer able to achieve.

So next time you're in a pub and you need a slash, keep an eye out for the newest exhibits on the walls. And maybe take a biro with you, just in case it dawns on you just how much you need to tell the world that 'Ya pullin me fuckin pisser maite geez'.

tomohara1984@hotmail.com

theworldonastick.blogspot.com/

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