piss etiquette

the men's room is wall-to-wall dudes. i can't hold it another second. i sneak into the ladies' room. it's empty. it's not what i'm used to. here are immaculate stalls, a wisp of perfume, a tampon dispenser, sparkly mirrors, a smear of lipstick on a faucet and a baby rack. i imagine gossip zinging around the tiles, dishing the bitches back in the bar. the opposite is true of the men's room. sloppy urinals are flecked with pubic hair, beer bottles, puke stains, unraveled, damp toilet paper and stink-o stalls with graffiti ads for blow jobs and, most importantly, we don't talk. we're not supposed to. the difference is behavioral. guys in public johns observe The Unspoken Rules. 1) don't go in there with the guy you're hanging out with. he will wait for you at the bar, or at your table, keeping watch over your cel phone and wallet and wait, properly, until you return, alone, so that he can then, on his own, relieve himself. you don't talk about it. you just do it. 2) if there are more than two urinals and one is occupied, do not take the slot next to the other guy. use the stall or keep the empty piss hole between yourself and your neighbor. 3) don't talk. talking implies weird friendliness in an unfriendly location. 4) it's ok to fart, but if you're a big barking tuba farter, don't laugh or draw undue attention. keep your reaction to yourself. farts are not funny in the men's room. just fart and get the fuck outa there. 5) flush with your foot, elbow or knee. do not use your hand. you never know what insidious herpes sore has smeared itself onto the chrome. 6) do not, under any circumstance, look at the person next to you. stare at the ceiling, focus on the golden yarn squirting into the porcelain or pick your nose, but do not look. that said of course, we do. we all do. we look. we don't look like we're looking, but that wandering falcon eye surveillance radar works overtime. so, yeah, we do it. we look. we don't want to be caught looking, we don't look all the time, but covertly, like i said, we look. not because we want to do anything with IT, with the unit. we don't. our competitive instinct is at work here. we compare size, shape, color, grossness, pubes, heft, etc. like Bowie says: 'boys check each other out'. from grade school to the Senate floor they want to know what you've got, or they want you to know what they've got. so they look. you look. c'mon. in the high school locker room when everybody was scared shitless about being found out, everybody looked. not only that, if we don't look directly AT it, we pick up on the choreography, the urinal dance. how it's taken out and put it back in. a) camouflage your cock behind hand or zipper and cut loose. b) stand back and fire into the hole, confident of your proud unit, certain of aim. c) be-stir the unbuckled belt, zipper, the opening of the slit in drawers, lowering of the drawers and engage in frenetic child-tearing-open-a-Christmas-present as prep for the spew. ditto the shake off. A) kill the thing and choke it to death. B) get rid of it quick and suffer a wet leg and spot. C) an in-between, half-hearted jerk, yellow drops on wrist and rub off on your pant leg. how did all these rules and behaviors get started, the ontological source of piss etiquette? i blame it all on dad who lowered his flashlight with a fatherly slight-of-hand so that sonny boy could learn how to do it on his own. in silent instruction, dad made it clear that one adheres to the rule of rules and does not look. ok? even as he checks out sonny boy's pencil as chip-off-the-old-block looks up at the old man's yard arm. dad won't say it out loud - go ahead, boy, stare. but the rule and the breaking of the rule we probably got from pop. that's what i think and so, when we walk back into the bar behind the stranger, who, minutes ago stood beside us shaking the be-jesus out of his thing, we know that he knows you saw it. or enough of it for both of you to think about it. one night i actually spoke up: 'dude, i gotta tell ya, ya got a gorgeous penis there'. that's right. i used the 'p' word. i thought 'cock', but i said penis. i hate that word. whatever. i figured the kid would like to know that there was a queer out there who had sincere admiration for his gear. something to store away for future ref. 'wow. a dude liked my dick. i didn't let him suck me off or anything, but it was cool to get the props.' i realize i took my life in my hands. that a forehead-to-stinky-urinal might have been the bloody end game. but ya know what? a life of caution ain't no life at all and rules are made to be broken.