Three weeks ago we investigated, Uniform Urination: Analysis of Peeing Postures, where we discussed various forms of male relief. What happens if you cannot go when the urge is pulsing for release? We all suffer from pee shyness at least once in our lives and I experienced an episode after my harrowing hernia operation at Lenox Hill hospital where the head nurse would not discharge me until I peed after surgery.
I drank a lot of water. I was dehydrated. My doctor didn’t allow any liquids for 24 hours before surgery. If you plan to pee you need to have something to pee out and it took several hours of drinking cranberry juice and water before the need to pee even began to tingle. When it came time to die or pee trying, the nurse followed me into the bathroom to make sure I wasn’t faking it.
I’ve never taken a drug test but I imagined how difficult it must be to pee with someone watching you. I couldn’t do it. I tried. Nothing came out. Sensing my shyness, she backed off a couple of feet to give me slightly more privacy.
She warmed up to become my friend and not my Warden. She rattled off all the things we would try together to get me to pee so we could both go home for the day.
First she suggested I do math problems in my head. She said that would disconnect my mind from my plumbing. Then nature would take over while the socialized brain worked on something else. I tried adding. I tried subtracting. I multiplied. Nothing. Still dry. Then she wanted me to sing.
“Engaging the melodious voice,” she claimed, “sometimes clicks a switch in the body that allows a mellow release.” My throat was dry from a day without water and I couldn’t hold a note. No streaming entertainment was dribbling forth.
Finally, she said the one thing that worked 100% of the time with her male hernia patients was running water. She turned on the cold water full blast in all four sinks.
The sound of frothing water echoed across the tiled bathroom. She told me to listen to the water and to close my eyes and to relax my entire body and to “become the water.”
Before she could finish saying “become the water” the golden arc was foaming in the urinal cake. I was melting with relief.
“Is it happening?” “Yes,” I whispered, “happening.”
“A hundred percent,” she said behind me as her voice trailed away into the hallway.
I was left alone with spigots as waterfalls and a personal fountain as evidence all internal connections were still working and normally pumping. I had not only become the water. I was the pee.