In the fifth grade in Korea — five years before I came over to the States to study abroad — I began learning to speak English. I was confused about the many different names for toilet: bathroom in your house, restroom outside, lavatory in the airplane, and washroom and W.C. and john and loo. I wanted to know why English speakers invented so many different words for something that is so concrete and easy to describe. There was only one word for it in Korean. I was not used to the complexity at all. Among all the different English words, toilet was the very first one I learned, so I just kept using it for similar kinds of places.

At the age of six, I found out that I had to be cautious regarding the toilet because it was “a dirty space,” according to my dad. When our family went to the department store where my anxious parents held my sister’s and my wrists tight as ever, so as not to lose us in the crowd of swarming hundreds, the worst moment for us was always telling them that we wanted to go to the toilet.If one of us went, the rest of the family had to follow. “Mom, toilet,” I would whisper. I could see my father’s frustrated eyes. He said, “Don’t go to the toilet outside of our home. Who knows who has used them before? You should have dealt with the matter before you came out.”

But, whether it was in a department store or at our home, as soon as I went into any toilet, my father’s suspicious eyes sent off an obvious red alert towards me. He hated the filthiness of the place. He didn’t like any kind of filthiness at all. Whenever he delicately touched something he cared about, he washed his hands twice, just as he did before he opened any books in his collection. Once, he decided to give an hour long lecture on why I should wash my hands often, and he used complex foreign vocabulary words, such as “bacteria” and “infection.” His encyclopedic knowledge and half-coercive paternal guidance made me feel self-conscious whenever I used the toilet.

By the time I became a third grader, I knew — not because my father told me so — that the toilet was just the dirtiest place I could go. I knew it for a fact. The disgusting condition of toilets at school contributed much to my perception. I saw a cockroach coming in and out of the rusty water pipe. I felt the unpleasant humidity. I smelled the creepy odor of the toilet. I could not stand it. I always hurried to “finish my business quickly,” as my father put it.

There was one exception. In the morning, our home toilet became “the make-up room,” the general Korean translation for toilet, somewhat disguising its essence. This was the typical order of things my father did every morning from Monday through Friday: he spent five minutes “finishing his business,” a few seconds to spray the anti-odor and anti-bacterial perfume, ten minutes for shaving, another five to brush his teeth, next ten to take a shower, then applying skin lotion and gel. Of course, I didn’t shave, but I tried to imitate what he was doing in the morning, and I felt like I became a man. After I got used to the habit, my morning in the toilet was similar to my father’s. It became the busiest place in our house. We had two toilets; they were usually full in the mornings, as all four of us prepared to go to school — my parents teaching at universities and my younger sister going to kindergarten. In the toilet, I hurried myself up to boost the engine of my day. I flushed the toilet as if I were starting a car behind the start line of a race. Where else can I feel that kind of tension?

Around 1998, I came over to study at Northfield Mount Hermon school, a private high school in Massachusetts. I lived in a big red-brick dorm. On the first day of school, I went to the toilet on the west end of our hallway. Some of my hall mates were taking a shower in white-curtained booths, while one was walking left and right while brushing her teeth, and others were hastily moving in and out of the bathroom. The busy morning of the toilet seemed very similar to that of our family bathroom.

By the end of the first month, I felt that something was different. My roommate was reading the newspaper in a tub when I stopped by before my swimming practice. A hockey player in our hall brought his plastic desk chair into a shower booth and took a shower for an hour and a half to “rejuvenate his body through aquatic meditation.” A Chinese student cut his own hair with scissors and a trimmer, his hair clogging up the drain. Our student leader showed off his muscles in front of the mirror, making various gestures for five minutes as soon as he got up. I was startled at all these unexpected activities in the bathroom.

Over time, I eventually got used to what they were doing and felt more comfortable with it. I also became less careful, going in without my father staring at me. But then I did something that my father would never forgive; I brought textbooks into toilet.

There was no choice. On the first day of class, which was also the first day I ever took a class in English, I struggled the most with “Advanced English as a Second Language.” The first homework assignment from my ESL teacher was reading twenty pages from The Great Gatsby and writing a reading journal. I read, sweat, and almost cried after I got to page ten. (Nick Carraway’s philosophical revelations cramped up in the first chapter seemed impossible to decipher at the time.) I could not finish it before 10:30, which was when our school shut off all the lights in our rooms just like all those conservative New England private high schools do. Every night, I had no choice but to go to the toilet to “finish my business.”

I used to sit on the toilet bowl in the corner booth. Without anyone interrupting me, I read on and on under the yellow dim light bulb and typed my work on my notebook computer, my legs often not able to bear the weight and going numb after staying in the same position for hours. In the end of the painful nights, I enjoyed the moment when I lifted up the heavy window of the toilet. All the oppressed smell, steam, stress, and energy flew high into the dark blue sky and the pine tree grove.

The toilet saved my high school days, helping me get through my toughest challenge. My father could not stop me from bringing my books into the toilet. It was my study room. I got to make the decision about whatever I wanted to do. I finally became a man.

Recently, I have been placing a wooden basket next to my toilet bowl. I put some newspapers, magazines, a note, and a pen in it. I have picked up the pleasure of being a toilet literate. Sitting down on the bowl, I stay there for a while, not only to work on the biological cycle, but also to enjoy my time. Everywhere else, there seem to be so many things to do and think. But here is where I can concentrate on my navigation through the sea of imagination and the islands of precious revelations. My thoughts are pure. My mind is free. I do not have to rush. Even this First Call article is a product of my toilet ruminations.

The sign on my toilet door now reads the same as the one English name for the room I completely agree with: “Restroom.”