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Public restrooms are perhaps the vilest places on earth. I could argue that point to great length, but today I will only concentrate on one factor that makes them vile, something only found in public men’s rooms, the porcelain wall hanging known as the urinal. Even the word “urinal” sounds disgusting. Couldn’t someone have come up with a better name than one based on the word “urine”? After all, we don’t call a toilet a “feces-o-matic” or a “stoolinator.”
At the risk of sounding like a Nancy-boy, I refuse to use urinals unless I absolutely have to. This has nothing to do with being “pee shy” or fearing that another man may take a peek at my unit. First of all, there’s something crude about the whole concept of pissing in a wall-mounted catch basin. Just because men can stand and pee, it doesn’t mean that I want to hug the wall and stand within inches of the receptacle in which said pee is collected.
I’ve been accused of having the olfactory system of a dog, but common sense tells you that when the thing you’re peeing into is that high off the ground and therefore closer to one’s nose, the odor is going to be stronger. Despite the multiple forms of urinal cakes that are present to disguise the odor, they don’t’ work. Urinal cakes merely add an industrial strength antiseptic smell to the already unpleasant smell of whiz. I’m not saying urine is the worst smelling substance on the planet, but it’s close enough to the top of the list for me to want to place a reasonable distance between it and my nose.
The design of urinals is also flawed. Anyone who has ever washed a car knows that when you squirt a car with a garden hose with the nozzle set on a fairly strong stream, a small amount of water ricochets off the surface. Therefore, if someone doesn’t want to get himself/herself wet, most people stand farther than four inches away from the car when rinsing it. Believe it or not, but these same laws of physics apply to a man pissing in a urinal. Regardless of how careful a guy is, he is invariably going to get a little bit of his own piss splashed back on him. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want even the smallest amount of my own pee on my pants or my person.
Then there is the privacy issue. Again this has nothing to do with pee shyness or fear of someone sneaking a peek. I simply don’t care to stand a foot away from another man as we both release bodily fluids. While urinating certainly brings a sense of relief, it is not an event that I care to celebrate with another man. This lack of privacy and proximity to one another also seems to further a curious assumption that since there is no wall between individuals at urinals that it is OK to strike up a conversation with your piss mate next to you. This is especially common at bars and the workplace. In the 20 or 30 seconds it may take me to piss, I don’t view that span as an opportune moment to discuss with a stranger the female prospects sitting at the bar or hammer out the details of a pending business deal with Tom from M&A. If I’m in a public men’s room, it’s out of necessity; I’m not there to partake in a pee party. If you want to chitchat with me, fine. Just don’t do it with your dick in your hands.
Though not necessarily unpleasant, related to this lack of privacy is another baffling phenomenon that I’ve witnessed all too often: guys talking on their cell phones while standing at a urinal. What really can be that important that it can’t wait? Is it really that urgent for you to call up your boyz to report the promising odds of you banging the skeezer you met at the bar that it can’t wait until after you piss? Perhaps for some losers, that is such a rare event that they can’t wait to brag to Richie and Potsie sitting at home eating Bugels in their mother’s basement. But seriously, have we all lost even the smallest semblance of dignity?
And because I have Sicilian blood in my veins, I was raised to believe that any minute spent outside of the secure confines of my home could ultimately lead to my demise. As an instructor once warned during a firearms training course that I took, never use a urinal because it is an opportune time for someone to physically assault you. Think about it. On your drive home from the Outer Banks, you pull over at the rest stop in Beckley to go to the bathroom. As you’re standing at the urinal in a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, tired from hours of driving and totally vulnerable with your package in your hand, Evelle and Gale Snoats sneak up behind you and slam your head off the top of the porcelain urinal or urinal pipes, rendering you unconscious or dead. If you’re lucky, all they do is rob you. Worst case scenario, you wake up duct taped to a tree in the middle of the woods and they’re fixin’ to give you the Ned Beatty treatment. It could happen.
There’s a double standard applied to men when it comes to public restrooms. On one hand, society portrays men as rude, animalistic slobs in dire need of sensitivity training and refinement, yet when it comes to public restrooms, men are provided with facilities seemingly designed and maintained for rude, animalistic slobs in dire need of sensitivity training and refinement. It’s just not right. Just because men are supposed to be the tougher and rougher of the two sexes, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be afforded the same courtesy of privacy in public restrooms that women enjoy.
Courage.
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