I can’t pee at public urinals.
And it’s only gotten worse the older I get.
When a movie lets out, or it’s the seventh inning stretch at a baseball game, the pressure in my bladder is second only to the unbearable pressure in my fevered mind as I make the death march to the bathroom.
Suddenly I can see individual dust particles falling and can hear a butterfly flapping its wings two hundred yards away. Colors are vivid and scary. My every nerve tingles, but the ones that control my bladder shut down completely.
Many is the time I’ve stood at a urinal, pants unzipped, painfully aware of the man standing next to me, who can fart and pee with ease, and, after waiting an eternity for nothing to happen, I press the flusher down anyway (hoping to trick my neighbor into thinking I can pee like a normal person; always followed by me chiding myself for thinking the man next to me has any interest in whether I pee or not; followed by me wiping the flop sweat from my brow with a paper hand towel; followed by me quickly exiting the restroom, eyes cast down).
The type of toilet is critical. Here, in ascending order of difficulty:
A Stall.
- 70/30 chance I’ll be able to relax my bladder. Sometimes I close my eyes and hum to myself to block out the noise of the guy in the stall next to mine. The best kinds of stalls for those of us suffering from UPA (urinary performance anxiety) are the ones you sometimes see in fancy hotels, where the partition walls go all the way down to the floor, preventing me from seeing another man’s trousers crumpled on top of his shoes. If only Larry “Wide Stance” Craig had been in such a stall, the whole unfortunate misunderstanding in the airport could’ve been avoided!
Urinal With Partition.
– 50/50, depending on whether someone is standing within three urinals to my right or left.
Urinal With No Partition.
– 70/30 I won’t be able to. Y’know, as I’m thinking about it now, maybe all this is just my lizard brain taking over. 10,000 years ago peeing without paying attention to your surroundings might have resulted in a cheetah taking off your penis.
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself.
Trough Urinal.
– 0 chance. Zero, nada, zip. If a terrorist put me up against the wall and threatened to shoot me if I couldn’t pee at the trough, I’d ask him to aim straight.
Doctor visits where I have to give a urine sample are a whole separate species of nightmare.
Even if I have a one-person bathroom completely to myself, if I’m one iota aware – and I always am – that a nurse might be within a ten foot radius outside that door, I can’t go. I have literally drunk seven glasses of water in the waiting room, nearly draining the water cooler and earning the other patients’ disapproving glances. And still, odds are, I won’t be able to perform.
Standing next to a perfectly good unoccupied bathroom in a doctor’s office, I’ve had to ask the nurse for a key to the bathroom down the hall. It’s absurd. They don’t let on, but I know they’re judging me, and finding me wanting – as they should.
Being blind drunk sometimes mitigates the problem, but it’s not a quick or sure-fire solution, plus rolling into the doc’s office hammered at 9:30 a.m. is probably not worth the DUI and 2 p.m. hangover.
Please tell me I’m not alone. Please tell me I’m still a good person. And please tell me you’ve figured out a solution to the life altering problem that is UPA.
You’re not alone…I’m not as bad off as you, I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually cared less about my surroundings. Reminded me of this little urinal test I ran across YEARS ago: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/urinal
while i cannot recall who imparted this particularly disgusting bit of wisdom upon me, i will share it with you now as it has proven to be the solution for my own personal pissing in public problems.
the next time you’re at a stall/trough and you feel that performance anxiety beginning to rear its ugly, purple, knob-like head, take a quick look at the dude standing next to you and then imagine pissing all over his face. your urine will then flow unimpeded not unlike the mighty niagara falls. i guarantee it.
To pee in public is an upper level man skill to be mastered. Become master of your domain. May take time, a journey perhaps, slaying terrible beast may be included.
The reward is freedom to whiz before others. I cannot tell you how to do this. Cannot tell of my personal journey to whizdom. Only you can flow.
FeO – your theory is predicated on the notion that one actually wants – nay, NEEDS – to pee on someone else’s face.
Additionally, people like you make me stick to stalls.
I’m a “stall/toilet” person. My OCD-ness prohibits me from possibly getting any urinal backsplash on my pants or shoes.
I’ll even “out” myself and admit that at home I SIT DOWN on the toilet just to urinate.
Of course, using a stall has it’s own unique set of ewwwww-considerations. And it’s the 21st century….WTH do DUMBASS USA stall doors STILL open INWARD…..especially for the ones that are really narrow in width and shallow in depth (distance between door and toilet)?? Which asinine restroom stall industry trade group deemed that this is a good idea??
I hope you will be able to find a solution to this challenge of yours. I think “holding” it in for too long increases your chances of getting an UTI…..and of having an “accident” as you get older. You gotta go when you gotta go….
Thanks for sharing and opening this rarely discussed problem.
Very Best Wishes…
btw, you will explode in Britain, troughs everywhere there.
just throwing it out there: could it be fear of public humiliation of the Asian penis size meme?
if you ever been to Asia (anywhere not Japan) then you can see men whizzing in the wind everywhere after the bars/KTVs close.
@jerome
no judgment, please. just trying to help the man. but yes, you probably wouldn’t want to be standing next to me at the adjacent urinal. however should we ever happen to come across one another in the lavatory, i challenge you to a winner take all urine sword fight, sirrah! en garde!
Ya know…I managed to live through that whole John/Lorena Bobbit extravaganza without seeing even one picture and I was happy. Thanks a lot, Alfredo.
Alfredo, loved your post. I am writing an unofficial sequel to yours next week =)
[...] THE OTHER STAGE FRIGHT: [...]
Alfredo, I am right there with you. Even if I start peeing and someone comes into the restroom my stream cuts off. the circular fountain style urinals are the most dreaded of all. One trick I use is to distract my brain with something like twitter on my phone or I try to read text backwards. Sometimes it works. I think the best solution is to practice. For me the most interesting thing is that I don’t have this problem in Asia. Asians don’t give a shit if you can pee or not and size doesn’t matter. Now an American man will talk to a guy while peeing even if you are a stranger. That doesn’t help. They might comment on size too which is so funny because Asians don’t give a shit. I need to live in Asia so I can piss freely.
[...] the unofficial sequel to Alfredo’s “The OTHER Stage Fright.” I was born a cat. I could only pee and shit in my own bathroom and had trouble using public [...]