I’m sitting at an outdoor table in a kind of passageway section of Le Pain Quotidien, the homey restaurant at Melrose and Westbourne. My table is right near the bathrooms, so if you want to take a leak you have to walk by me. And since I’m an up-close witness and more or less forced to acknowledge each and every passerby it’s almost astonishing how many people (especially women) are following nature’s call.

I mean, I’m trying to concentrate here and “slip under the ice,” as it were, but I’m constantly being jarred out of this state by a relentless stream of people walking by, each and every anxious body saying “I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak, I need to take a leak…,” their sandaled heels pounding the floorboards and causing the beams to slightly creak.