COLE STRYKER

thenotes:

Allowed a choice in the matter of peeing in public restrooms, I’ll take a closed stall over an exposed urinal or (kill me) communal trough. I’ve been the same all my life, I know, because one of my youngest memories—let’s say age nine—has me wriggling out of the church pew one Sunday Mass and taking my good sweet hymnless time going down to the basement men’s room, which was empty and echoed the very silence that filled it, but in which I nonetheless elected to use a stall. Standing over the toilet, I could not immediately urinate, as urination was more excuse than emergency in this case, and besides I had a nervous bladder, a condition that had prompted me to seek the privacy of the stall in the first place, out of fear that someone else would enter the restroom. In short order, someone did. It was another kid; I could tell from the insolent little dress shoes, just like mine, slapping at cheap tile. The shoes paused near the bank of stalls. I tried not to breathe. The mystery kid spoke in a snotty, aggrieved voice.

“Why are your feet facing the wrong way?”

Was this really happening? Was it inconceivable to this boy that one could also urinate in a stall? Blessed with anonymity and shocked by my own vitriol, I replied: 

“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

The kid shifted his weight for a moment.

“Oh,” he finally said, horror closing his throat. “… oh my god.”

He fled the premises and returned to the homily, leaving me to relieve myself in peace, though not by the method he supposed. And I hope the falsehood haunts him still.

“Come on…oh no oh please God come on…”

My tween bladder seized up after waiting in line for twenty minutes for a communal trough at a Steeler game. There were easily a half dozen men waiting to move in on the spot at the trough. I shook it. I flicked it. Nothing. I hung my head and zipped up, feeling countless burning, half-drunk sneers (Why would you make the rest of us wait if you didn’t hafta go ya little faggot?) as I moped through the denim corridors.

Stalls or die.