I’m at my mom’s house in McHenry, Illinois, an longish train ride from downtown Chicago. I needed to sneak off today and write Savage Love, so I headed for a Panera Bread Company a half a mile from her house. Panera is one of those supposedly high-end franchise restaurants that have taken over the `burbs. Despite the fact that this Panera faced six lanes of traffic packed with SUVs and Hummers and minivans, the place was going for an urban feel. It’s had Starbucks-esque interior (lots of browns and ambers), a couple of deep leather club chairs, a fireplace.

The only thing missing from this “third space,â€� faux-urban paradise was, naturally enough, urbanites. I walked to the café, an urbanite sort of thing to do, and I was probably the first customer to show up on foot in the three or so years it’s been open. Everyone else in the café was either under 18 or over 35. Moms, dads, kids, tweens, and teenagers who were clearly itching to graduate from high school and get the hell out of McHenry. (And I don’t want to hurt my mom and step-dad’s feelings, but who can blame them? ) There was no one I could see in who was in their 20s or 30s. The presence of these young-ish adults—20s/30s, single, childless—pretty much defines modern urban spaces. Cities are increasingly the province of single adults (who live in apartments) and the retired (who live in condos). People are writing about it, cities are stressing about it.

After dashing off some of my famously unhelpful advice—I’m particularly unhelpful next week; I fail to answer two questions, and then lash out at someone who had the nerve to challenge me on a point of Catholic doctrine—I had to take a leak before I walked back to mom’s.

Here’s the urinal in the bathroom:

When I stepped up to the plate, I noticed that this urinal had something to say to me. I looked a little closer…

A little closer and I got the urine-slicked message…

Just say no to drugs. Another moment of urban/exurban disconnect: In, say, Linda’s or the Cha Cha, this would be a highly ironic statement for a urinal to make. If they bothered to put a red plastic urinal thingy—what is that thing anyway? a filter?—in the urinal, there wouldn’t be a trace of it left by the end of the night. It would dissolve under the combined toxicity of one night’s worth of hipster urine.

Anyway, I peed, returning the hot water I had purchased when I arrived at Panera back to ecosphere in the form of slightly-less-hot water. And thus is the circle of life completed. Then I walked back to mom’s place. And ultimately I took the urinal’s anti-drug message to heart. Instead of sharing a traditional post-Christmas speedball with mom, we split a bottle of wine. Cheers!