Stage Fright

I can't pee with someone next to me or behind me.

I think it's got something to do with the flight or fight response. That you're vulnerable when you're peeing and so your body goes on red alert when something lurks close by. Or it could just be me. I don't think so though because I remember an episode of Friends when Joey couldn't pee on Monica to alleviate her jellyfish bite. That show has made me feel better about a lot of things.

This happy trait of mine isn't normally a problem except we spent seven solid days driving cross-country this last month, involving numerous rest stops. And since we stuck mostly to interstate highways, the rest stops were almost always a buzzing hub of activity.

I remember a stop just south of Wichita. Mostly clean, but a narrow hallway of heads, urinals on one side, stalls on the other, no more than four feet separating the two rows. At the very end of the stalls and urinals, a boy of about seven or eight, nervously pacing back and forth. I've seen kids do this before. Some are too short to pee in a urinal. That doesn't stop some from getting a beautiful arc going that manages to get about half the urine in the porcelin shell. Other kids get the fright so they hold out for a stall to open up. Only the stall doors are all open here. He's pacing back and forth waiting for something, but I'll be damned if I can discern what it is.

I ignore him and saunter up to a urinal. My bladder full from hours of driving, I relax and let nature take its course. Only nature is concerned that this pacing little boy is going to pounce on my back and rip my throat out. So my flow is dammed tighter than the Hoover.

I reposition my feet in the hops that some light jostling will open the floodgates. I start picturing waterfalls, garden hoses, and exploding tanker-trucks of water. Nothing.

The boy, meanwhile, has lengthened the path of his pacing. He's now walking fully up and down the tiny hallway. He says nothing.

I pull out the big guns, hold my breath, and focus pressure on my nether regions. I tell Bladder, "Damn the boy, empty out and if the boy attacks, I'll have Hands and Feet take care of him afterwards." Bladder either doesn't hear me or refuses to believe that Hands and Feet can handle an attacking boy. I throw in Elbows as reinforcements. Bladder remains deaf or unconvinced.

A man enters the bathroom, but rather than make his way head down to a urinal or stall, he stops and looks directly at the boy. Like he knows him. Thank god, sweet relief!

The man says, "Are you lost."

The boy stops pacing and shakes his head no.

"Is your daddy in here with you."

"No," he replies. I hear an accent. Swedish. Swahili maybe.

"Are your parents outside?"

The boy shakes his head yes. Nothing about this exchange is helping me get any closer to peeing. My head now throbs from the pressure I'm putting on my southward equipment to do their job. The spigot turns on only when another man pulls up beside me and effortlessly unleashes a torrent of his own. Like a start with jumper cables, my bladder relents. Holding in a sigh, I picture a beaker, the one with measurement lines, filled to the top with an amber liquid but slowing emptying. Fifty gallons. Now forty. Thirty. A sudden burst drops the payload to ten gallons. Decrease in water pressure, empty. Shake. Collapse. Done.

In the midst of my blissful whiz, I dimly recall the man taking the boy outside the bathroom. I follow up myself and see the boy rejoined with his family. I consider advising the parents to get the kid some psychological help, but then I remember my inability to pee and consider the entire incident even-steven.

I don't drink anything the rest of the day until we reach our hotel.