Editor’s note: This column was mostly inspired by Ziv’s time spent at UC-Berkeley. While acknowledging that the bathrooms at Stanford are generally a considerable improvement, he warns that the conditions described could be present in any public restroom.

As I lay my bare ass across cold porcelain every night, a lot of questions run through my mind. Do bathrooms necessarily have to be dirty, ugly places? Why do some public restrooms turn into low-grade biohazards by the end of the day? We spend a lot of time in bathrooms, so I want to devote some love to the room that takes such good care of us.

Since I’m a guy, I can only adequately address male restrooms. In terms of dirtiness, I understand the technical issues of aiming and the occasional loss of control that leaves the floor draining more fluid than the toilet, but does that excuse the poo that altogether missed the toilet? Or the misspelled racist comments fighting for space with the penis drawings and the impromptu blowjob classifieds on the stall walls?

I’ve developed a theory called the “Accidental Territorial Trigger Hypothesis.” Dirty male bathrooms are a combination of callousness, instinct and the inherent error involved in transporting urine from the male toolkit to the inside of a toilet from a standing position. Situations typically evolve like this:

The bathrooms start clean, then one guy, either from disrespect to society or a simple miscalculation of distance, ends up spilling a bit of urine on the toilet seat. Male urine contains compounds called hydroxyl-man-funk-amines, and every male has a unique set of them, like fingerprints. When a male smells another male’s hydroxyl-man-funk-amines, it sets off territorial instinct pathways. These pathways aggravate the male and inspire him to cover up the opposing male’s scent. Thus, he urinates over the previous man’s urine, and pretty soon you have a vicious cycle as new males come in to use the toilet. A giant pool of piss covering the bathroom floor results that not only hyper-aggravates males and leaves them incapable of aiming but also makes it that much harder to reach the toilet because you have to step back, like, three feet to avoid soaking your shoes in urine. Female pheromones sequester hydroxyl-man-funk-amines, and that’s why co-ed restrooms are typically cleaner than all-male ones.

Aside from differences in cleanliness, I can say one thing about the bathrooms of both sexes: They are inherently ugly and solely utilitarian facilities. These are places where we bare and clean the stuff that makes us human beings at least twice a day — rather important rituals. If bathrooms see just as much flesh as bedrooms, why do bedrooms receive all of the decorating attention? The Sydney Opera House recognizes this inequity: their bathrooms have soft, seductive-like lighting with little speakers playing Beethoven at every toilet and a sink that looks more like an art piece than a basin where water drains. That’s what I’m talking about — if I had limited funds to build my dream house, I’d focus it all on the bathroom. Marble floors, mood lighting and an in-house jazz band for my nightly shower.

So you might be wondering why I put more R’s than typically dictated for the word “dirty” in the title of this column. That’s because a lot of scandalous stuff goes down in bathrooms. Those blowjob offers actually do exist. People have sex in bathrooms all the time, and not just in clean, fancy ones. I suppose that’s a true measure of passion: when the scent of desire can overcome the smell of feces. I even heard a story of some poor chap in Arizona contracting gonorrhea in his eye after using a sink that had seen some action.

What I’m trying to say is that everyone should give more respect to our plastic- and porcelain-attired friends, and we can start by having less sex in public restrooms and making sure to flush after a case of monstrous diarrhea. All I’m asking for is a clean, decent place where we can take a load off while taking a load out without having to hold our breath.