Dear Filth Peddlers,

I want to thank you for all the work you guys have been doing, fellow toilet users and the remarkable custodial staff here at Beaudesert Central. You guys are stupendous. I mean, I can finger paint with blood and stool if I need to, but wow, you guys are something else.

When I think back on my life’s work on the toilet (I think I read somewhere once that men will spend up to three years of their lives in the loo), it’s hard to recall all the times I’ve had the urge to use my bowels like a sandblaster and try to refinish the walls of a stall, but you guys are thinking it 24/7.

When I entered the washroom, I couldn’t have begun to imagine the Wonderland I was about to enter. Usually I’ll go into a public toilet and I’ll see urinals and sinks and stalls. But this time, as I waded through discarded paper towels and the scent of dysentery and human suffering burned my eyes like smoke from a shit-infused forest fire, I saw so many sights . . .

I want to thank the person that left a condom right on the seat in the first stall, because it’s an unusual touch that is like cinnamon sprinkled on your cappuccino, only in this case the cinnamon contains someone else’s DNA and potentially life-threatening diseases. And is so fucking gross I physically recoiled.

I want to thank the person who used the second stall for faecal target practice. I never would have thought of bringing in a Lazy Susan I could stand on whilst bent over with my arse spread turning myself into a high-pressure water blaster. And a tip of the hat to whatever Indian restaurant’s grease-trap you raided for your last meal, the curry smell really seared itself into my olfactory bulbs.

Usually when I go to a shopping centre toilet it’s because I literally have no other, reasonable options. It’s either this or simply defecate in my own pants in front of the tobacconist’s. And, at the time, I thought that would be the worse option. But now I don’t think that. Now I know simply passing out and shitting in full view of Woolworths and Crazy Clark’s and the butcher’s would have been more dignified, less traumatic and, yes, far more sanitary.

My parents weren’t award winners by any means – I got left in parking lots and with the odd felon a few times a year, but they did manage to teach me to aim the various liquids, solids and semi-solids that I keep brewing inside me towards a basin, a duffel bag, a waste basket or a toilet for the most part. I need to know how, where and by what you people were raised that the act of eliminating waste became some kind of performance art project – a biohazardous Cirque du Soleil, if you will.

I do need to question the third and final stall, the handicapped stall which I settled on using as it was the only one with the human waste contained within the bowl. Of course there’s nothing saying that individuals with wheelchairs or assistive devices can’t be homosexual, but I can’t imagine so many of them are going to frequent this particular stall that it’s necessary to have such a vast spread of gay-themed graffiti scrawled on the walls. From phone numbers, to reach-around pledges, to promises that if I’m not out of here within 15 minutes a man named Terry is going to show up for anti-bacterial soap-lubed handjobs. It was really just too much.

These are great days we’re living in, my friends. You people who made these messes here today are the finest human beings I will ever know. After I rotate back to my own home, I’m going to miss not having anyone around who chooses to urinate on the floor in front of the urinal, instead of in the urinal itself.

And to the custodial and janitorial staff here in the centre – sirs, I am in awe. I have slacked off at jobs in the past but never have I managed to do my job so poorly and with such laissez-faire nonchalance that I actually recreated plague conditions. You should lead seminars. God bless and keep you all. I need to go shower a dozen times and wipe myself down with chlorine bleach.