By Maurice

It happens to all of us eventually. You’re out on the town having a good time and suddenly nature calls and you gotta go – right now. So, you shuffle towards the bathroom hoping nobody can tell that with each step the need grows more urgent.

Finally, you can drop your ass on a public toilet seat, and the first thought that stabs into your brain is: how many strangers have rubbed their business here today? The piss stains on the floor, the perfume of shit and disinfectant, the graffiti that reads like the diary of a lonely pervert—it all hits you at once. You flush with your foot. You open the stall door with your elbow. You try not to breathe too deeply. And you wonder: am I about to catch something that’ll kill me?

Turns out, probably not.

A microbiologist down in Florida says, sure, theoretically you can pick up diseases from a toilet seat. But surprisingly, the risk is “vanishingly low.”

That’s professor-speak for: stop being dramatic.

Sex diseases? Forget it. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, the rest of the clap parade—they can’t survive long outside the warm cave of the human body, let alone on a cold plastic ring in a Greyhound station. You’d have to smear someone’s fresh, still-steaming fluids directly from the seat onto your privates to even have a chance. If that’s your habit, you’ve got bigger problems.

Bloodborne diseases? No dice. Unless you’re sitting on a puddle of someone else’s blood, and you’re too dumb or drunk to notice. Even then, it’s a stretch. Urinary tract infections? Nah. You’re more likely to give yourself one wiping your own crap the wrong way.

There are exceptions. The human papillomavirus, the one that gives you genital warts, is a tough little bastard. It can hang around for days on surfaces. Herpes? In theory, yes, if somebody with a flare-up parked their sore ass there before you and you’ve got broken skin. But again—unlikely.

So, those toilet paper nests people build like they’re prepping for a lunar landing? Useless. The paper’s porous. The germs slide right through. And squatting, “hovering”? Doctors say it can mess up your plumbing, strain your muscles, and even help bring on a UTI. All that work, and you’re still screwed.

The real danger isn’t your ass. It’s your hands.

Everything in that stall—seat, flush handle, door lock—is painted with other people’s invisible leftovers. You touch it. Then you touch your mouth, your nose, your burger. That’s how the bugs get in.

And the bugs are out there. E. coli. Salmonella. Staph. Strep. Norovirus—the real bastard of the bathroom world. That one can survive for months on a surface. Ten little viral particles are enough to knock you flat, puking your guts out on the linoleum.

It’s not just the seat. It’s the handle, the sink, the paper towel dispenser. Hell, the dirtiest spot is usually the floor. That’s where the toilet sneeze lands. Yeah, the sneeze. Every time you flush, tiny droplets of shit-water spray into the air like confetti at a very depressing parade. They land everywhere—on the stall walls, your clothes, your phone if you’re dumb enough to be scrolling while you crap.

Scientists even gave it a nice name: “toilet plume.” I prefer “shit mist.” Forty to sixty percent of whatever’s in the bowl goes airborne. One professor says the lid doesn’t even help. The mist squirts out sideways like a drunk clown with a water gun.

So, what do you do?

You don’t caress the seat. You don’t build a fort out of Charmin. You don’t squat as if you’re punishing your thighs. You touch as little as possible. You flush and run. You wash your goddamn hands. And maybe you carry hand sanitizer and actually use it.

Here’s the kicker: public bathrooms, the ones we all fear, aren’t even the dirtiest. Some Arizona professor swabbed around and found home bathrooms to be worse. Most people clean theirs once a week, if that. Public toilets? Scrubbed multiple times a day. So maybe the seat at the airport Starbucks is cleaner than the one back at your place. Think about that while you’re perched in your slippers reading the morning paper.

Bottom line? Bathrooms are gross, but they’re not apocalypse zones. You will not contract the clap from sitting down. What’ll get you is your own filthy hands, your own dirty phone, and your own filthy habits.

So wash up. Twenty seconds, soap, water. Not the sad eleven-second rinse most people do. And don’t kid yourself, you’re not that special. Only one in five people actually wash their hands properly.

The genuine horror isn’t the germs. It’s us.