Dexter, Sinister.

 I'm in the toilet at the airport. There are six cubicles, and the cubicles at either end are both occupied. This is as it should be. This is good toilet etiquette. You want to put as much distance as you can between yourself and the next squatter. That, however, has left me the central toilet as the only viable option. There's something clammily intimate about somebody shitting next to you, separated only by a slender panel of PDF, somebody whose belt has snuck into your cubicle like a snake's head, as his jeans rest in folds on top of his trainers. The Romans, horrible, hearty fuckers that they were - it was all organised fun for the Romans - used to shit communally, al fresco, pooing and chatting. They did business while they were doing their business, shaking hands to seal the deal with stinky fingers. They were body confident, bi-sexual fans of the small penis. That's not my culture. I'm from the south of England and the 20th Century, and I don't want to admit I go to the toilet at all. 

I take the middle stall, lowering the seat into place with a wad of loo roll. This is a good airport toilet, as far as airport toilets go. There's toilet paper available. No piss on the floor or seat. No shit in the toilet and no toilet roll blocking it, rendering it unflushable and swimming in unsavoury gravy. This is the normal state of British public toilets, the gents, at any rate. You'd hope the ladies would be more decorous, but anything goes these days. I've seen the conga lines of pissed up hens, penis earrings shaking beneath their pink Stetsons, as they cackle and howl and fall on their arses, drunk enough to bounce. You can't imagine they'd be too careful in the powder room. And what sort of powder is it anyway? 

I remove my trousers and pants and sit on the toilet. I've known people put down a lucky horseshoe of individual sheets but life really is too short. Immediately, as I attempt to relax, there's activity to my right. The door of the next-door cubicle is kicked open and the new occupant announces himself with a wet burp and then a little chuckle about the wet burp. Then there's a vivid collection of noises suggesting clothing being rearranged and, with an audible sigh, he begins to piss noisily, carelessly, happily. I, meanwhile, have seized up. My anus is now an inny. I'll sit this out. I'll wait for him to flush, to leave, to wash and dry his hands, before stepping out unseen from the stall. Damage limitation. It's probably bad for my digestive health, but that's who I am. Bum shy. Blame my parents. Or just blame me. They're dead, leave them alone. I'm on my own in the world now, a moody sphincter my only friend. 

He flushes. I unclench. He'll be away. Phew. 

But he's not away. 

I'm attuned to every noise, each movement amplified, not just by the hard, cold surfaces of the stall walls, but by my own heightened sensitivity, besieged and hidden as I am, huddled like a Greek soldier in a trundling wooden horse, alive to each footfall, every slatted lock or tumbled toilet dispenser. So, when I tell you the man from the right hand side cubicle unlocked his door, shuffled maybe three paces in front of me, I could see his shadow as it passed beneath the door, and entered the cubicle on my left, perhaps you will understand my mounting horror. I was not confused. I was in complete command of me faculties. The door on my left slapped shut. The seat slammed down. A belt opened with a whipcrack. There was the warm abrasion of coarse fabric over hairy thighs and the raw pork slap of his arse on the toilet seat. He went down like a sandbag. I imagined eddies of dust rising. 

What was this? 

I was certain of what I'd heard. He'd urinated to the right of me and now he was preparing to defecate to the left of me. Sinister, indeed. There was a single high-toned squeak of flatulence, the rasp of a sad clown's muted trumpet, and my jeans were back over my knees and I was standing to secure my belt before I heard the tumble, like luggage dropping onto a wet carousel, and I was out of the cubicle and into the toilet proper. 

What had happened? I'd been surrounded. A man had marked his territory all about me. He knew I was there. My door had been locked, the engaged sign flashed forbidding red. He'd deposited his waste all around me, like I was a covered wagon, and he thousands of whooping Sioux warriors raining down their brown and yellow arrows. If the wagon wasn't covered before...He was in there now, I could hear him, lustily pooing, a contented groan with every exertion like he was curling weights and starting to feel the burn. The toilet, already hot, the air conditioning regurgitating a thin gruel of faecal spores, was starting to become noisome, so I retreated to the sink, staring at my ghostly pallor in the wall tiles as I washed my hands, the strip-light emphasising bruises beneath my eyes, my sulky mouth, flattening my hair. I had not been to the toilet and was now fraudulently washing my hands as if I had done. I'd been intimidated by someone else's showy, extravagant, two-cubicle excesses, and I was still as full of shit as ever.