Nobody knows you when you’re down and grout
We can't all be this clever
I wouldn’t presume to call myself a connoisseur, but certainly I am an enthusiast of men’s room graffiti. I don’t mean drawings, which I can sometimes appreciate but never like too much, especially when it’s just a bunch of penises. (Isn’t it always?) I’m talking about text—the strange, cryptic, banal, or extremely offensive thoughts that refuse to remain unexpressed.
I’m talking about the first office I worked in, where a presumably grown man had written A friend with weed is a friend indeed. The science building at Indiana University, where an entire tile wall declared, in giant pencilled letters, I LOVE BOOBS, a sentiment that obviously burned too bright, until someone had no choice but to share it with everybody. I’m talking about IU’s Ballantine Hall, where obnoxious misogynistic bullshit—I could have fucked a chick on the rag last night, but I didn’t want to mess up my sheets—was followed by: Questions? Comments? Inquiries?
There must be something about college, because the crown jewel of my experience was at Eastern Washington University.
Cheney, Washington. Patterson Hall. Third floor men’s room. Near the English Department, where I used to work. The last stall.
All over the wall, the grout between the tile was covered in writing. And not just any writing: puns on the word grout. It was impossible to discern which one had been first, but it really didn’t matter. They were one big art installation now.
I never added to it, but I did take a notebook in there one day to record them for whatever posterity might care. And here you are. I’m pretty sure that what follows doesn’t represent them all. And I like to think that once I left EWU the torch kept burning. So let’s just call it a good start.
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Alexander the Grout
The Grout Escape
The Grouter Things in Life
The Grout Gatsby
The Grout Depression
Grout Balls of Fire
The Grout Dictator
The Grout Salt Lake
The Grout Barrier Reef
Groutcho Marx
The Groutest Story Ever Told
Grout Scot!
They’re Grout!
Grout with the old, in with the new
The Grout Outdoors
All Things Grout and Small
Grout Expectations
The Grout Train Robbery
Seasons groutings!
Groutings, earthling
The groutest thing since sliced bread
Grout things come to those who wait
With grout power comes grout responsibility
Well that’s just grout!
The Grout Wall of China
Grouted cheese
Don’t grout your teeth
The groutest show on Earth
Three strikes you’re grout
Only in the English building. You should have checked out the bathrooms in the athletic department. I always liked the pictures. They were like cave paintings/remedial health classes etched into the stalls with a key. One of them–I hope it’s still there for the Smithsonian–has an over-sized penis ejaculating teardrops into an anatomically perfect, if not cartoonishly over-sized vagina. The teardrops arc back out of the vagina and turn into birds or bats. I couldn’t tell. Come to Eastern Washington University. “Our athletics suck, but one of our football players is like Basquiat with a key.” I would buy a coffee table book of these writings and drawings.
For Scott and Dan,
A French (or maybe French-Canadian)bathroom graffiti inspired ommercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gahQXAoBX5g
Protegez Vous!
We had grout-writing at a dive I frequented in Albuquerque. I hope that you added your own groutwords. I did. The Big LeGroutski. Seeing a man agrout a horse. Hot dog and sauergrout.
They had groutspeak at a bathroom in Reed College, too, which made me sad with the realization of how non-originally clever and awesome my barflies and I were…
The first time I went to college (Antioch), there was an awesome permanent marker drawing of Nixon in one of the dorm showers so that when you took a shower Nixon was pissing on your head. I never ceased to be impressed and amused by this.
I stacked a lot of grout last night.
I really don’t want to know what that’s a euphemism for.
No, I literally stacked bags of grout for four hours last night and kept thinking of your post.