Right then, I’m not too sure how to go about this one but I feel I need to do it. My sense of decency insists on it. But before you accuse me of anything, please read it properly and see that it’s coming from a place of concern, not condemnation.

So here I go!

I’m on a short break in Skipton at the moment with my lovely lady wife and we’re staying on our daughter’s boyfriend’s beautiful canal boat. His name is Paul, by the way, and he’s a top-drawer bloke who we like tremendously. Being experienced boaters of old, Ange and I are used to the problems and foibles of boating life. One of the main problems facing canal boaters is the onboard toilet; vis-à-vis they do tend to fill up rather quickly as they are either the cassette variety, which need to be emptied by hand every four to five days, or the pump out type that rely on a septic storage tank that requires pumping out at a boatyard when full.

Paul’s boat is the latter and so we decided that, as its not actually our boat, we would only use the loo for number 1’s. For number 2’s we would use the public conveniences in the car park opposite where we are moored. They aren’t the best toilets in Skipton but they aren’t the worst either – that particular honour goes to the utterly horrendous CRT loos by the canal; lets just say you do need to be pretty bloody desperate to use them. But the car park ones are just the right side of ok.

But only just…

By the closest of margins…

Actually, now I think about it, they are quite awful.

There! I’ve set the scene nicely haven’t I?

So it was with a little trepidation, on Monday morning, that I made my shambling, shuffling way to the car park toilet as fast as my trembling and aching legs could carry me. I wasn’t exactly touching cloth but there was a genuine and definite feeling of necessity for the journey; if you know what I mean. Suffice to say I made it there in time.

There are two cubicles in the Coach Street car park toilets and seeing as the right hand one was in use I had no choice but to take the left. I closed and locked the door and within a matter of a few seconds was in position as it were.

And that’s when I saw it!

I looked at the back of the cubicle door and saw that it was adorned with graffiti of a somewhat thought-provoking if slightly off-putting nature.

There it was in inch high black letters, the words – SISSY IN PINK PANTIES WANTS COCKS TO SUCK!!!

There was an accompanying phone number but I won’t print it here.

Now, let me set the record straight. I am not in any way homophobic. I am not any kind of phobic towards anyone regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation. I accept everyone on merit and I have many gay and lesbian friends whose friendship I value and I would never allow anyone to verbally abuse them because of their sexuality.

However…

There was a sudden revulsion that rose up in me at that glowing piece of literary genius on the back of that door. I didn’t want to be in a toilet that was being used for such purposes. And believe me, if the words had been written by a member of the fairer sex I would have felt exactly the same.

I think what actually made me feel that way was the fact that it was a grotty, smelly and largely unpleasant public convenience and the thought that anyone should want to engage in any kind of sexual activity in such a noxious location turned my very stomach.

Because, and here’s the clincher, whoever Sissy was, his intellectual outpouring wasn’t actually the worst thing written on the back of the door. It just stood out the most being in such big letters. There were much, much worse messages and the urge to get back to the boat and have a scalding hot shower was strong in this one.

There is no way on this Earth that I am going to reprint those awful scrawls here and I am neither a prude nor easily shocked or offended. Yes, that’s how bad they were. I soon realised that Sissy, whoever he was, was not the real problem here.

The reality that we are living in such a sexually depraved society that men (or women) are happy to perform fellatio, or anything else that comes to mind, in such a disgusting, germ and disease ridden environment was enough to make my gorge rise and I if I hadn’t already begun to have a bowel movement I would have left immediately and tried my luck elsewhere.

The question I have, I suppose, is that in this age of internet communication that we find ourselves living in, is there not a better way for people to a) contact one another with their desires and b) find somewhere more appropriate to perform them?

Listen, as far as Sissy is concerned, he can spend the rest of his life sucking whatever and whoever he wants wherever he wants to and I’ll be as happy as Larry for him but I hope for his sake (and all those other toilet authors) that he takes serious precautions because if that’s the way he conducts his sex life he’s asking for a whole host of extremely unpleasant and potentially life-threatening illnesses to come his way and not necessarily sexually transmitted ones.

Part of me felt sorry for Sissy. He’s clearly a very lonely person and not in any kind of stable relationship with a significant other. Homosexuality and single sex marriage are now perfectly legal in the UK and have been for some time now. Surely there’s no longer any need for people like Sissy to skulk around in the car park bogs hoping for a blow job. It’s not the 19^th or 20^th century anymore. Gay men meeting in public lavatories is nothing new of course, it’s been happening for a long time. I just feel that it’s something that should be consigned to the history books as there really is no need for it anymore and I think that had a large part to play in how I was feeling. It seemed like an archaic throwback to a less tolerant time when homosexuality was viewed with fear or ridicule by those who knew little about it.

And so, no matter how close I am to soiling myself in the future, I won’t be using Coach Street toilets again in a hurry. I’d hate to intrude on someone’s intimacy of either a hetero or homosexual nature.

And in case you’re wondering (ya weirdo ye), I went to the disabled one in Morrisons on Tuesday.

And, there was no graffiti!