Women, it seems, go into a stall to
piss. Sometimes I go into a stall too, when I piss; usually when there is someone standing next to me. Being piss shy is about inhabiting a
zen koan:
try not to think
about pissing
so that
you may piss.
Sometimes I fake it, and pretend I have done my business, and flush the urinal. Of late, I have been more bold about just zipping up and moving away to find a toilet stall. Who the fuck cares what people think?
In my own head, there's all this undercurrent of thought:
This is not foolish; this is not about who's alpha urinator. It's just some stupid little valve that won't open!
But as
everyone knows, there's no
reasoning with a
dick.
Strange thing is, I remember the exact day I became piss shy. It was in
China, in
1988, in a stupid little roofless
piss-shelter under a
bridge by a
river in Chendu. And this older man, in his fifties, who was standing next to me, finished up and smiled at me with a
knowing smile and said, "I'll be gone in a sec," and it was like some stupid minidrama about the revenge of age upon youth. Or something.