Mind Your Own God Damn Business

A standard American Toilet, or, as I call it, "The Coward's Chair".

When I was three or four, my family went on a road trip to the northwest. We piled into a VW van, my parents in the front and me in a car seat in the back, and hit the road.

I don’t have a lot of memories about that trip, but there are a few things that I can still recall.

• We had The Blues Brothers soundtrack on cassette, and I would’ve listened to “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the M.G.’s for the duration of the trip if my selfish asshole parents hadn’t insisted on listening to more than one song during our two day drive.
• At one picnic stop, my Mom gave me some little plastic dinosaurs to play with. I was so pumped up that I almost forgave her and my Dad for subjecting me to music that wasn’t Green Onions during the trip. Almost.
• I figured out how to unbuckle my car seat. When my parents saw what I’d done, they told me that I should leave it buckled, so I did.

There was one especially influential moment on that trip that I’ll never forget, however. It was the kind of life-changing epiphany that altered the way I viewed life.

We were at the beach in Washington, checking out the ocean. I had to pee. There were no bathrooms nearby, so my father and I peed in the sand.

And that, as they say, was that. My father’s lesson about public urination combined with a fear of deadly toilet sharks sealed the deal – barring extraordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t be peeing in any toilets again (at least on purpose) for a very long time.

You see a beautiful piece of scenery; I see a place to do my business.

And where would I be doing my business instead, you ask? The real question, my friend, is where WOULDN’T I be? Bushes, trees, sand, the open mouths of sleeping hobos – if it was closer to the ground than my penis, you’d better believe that I was willing to pee on it.

As I grew older and not only spent less time outdoors but got enough of a grip on my phobia that I was able to go into a room with a gallon of water sitting in a porcelain bowl without worrying that there was a great white shark hiding somewhere in it, the unconventional places that I peed narrowed down to two main locations.

The first was empty cans and bottles in my room. When people hear this, they’re consistently disgusted and want to know why. The answer, of course, is that at that specific moment, it’s slightly less work to pee in a can than it is to walk all the way to the bathroom, which is fifteen, maybe even twenty feet away from my room. Sure, there are some complications – it means more work in the long run, since I have to empty the cans out later, and there are a lot of different bad things that can happen when you have a bunch of cans of urine sitting around in your room – spill one, and it’s more or less like you peed on the floor.

Another complication is when someone foolishly thinks that the Dr. Pepper can on my bedstand is full of Dr. Pepper and decides to take a sip. This situation is a little bit more nuanced than spilling it on the floor; if the person making this mix-up isn’t me, I consider it hilarious and hopefully a powerful lesson about the perils of coming into my room and fucking with my stuff. When the person who foolishly tries to drink the warm, yellow bottle of Snapple is me, however, I’m far less amused. And yes, I’ve done that – I have peed in a can and then had a sip of it in my mouth before I realized the terrible, terrible mistake that I had made. It’s a pretty memorable experience. Have you ever had a sip of what you think is milk and been surprised when it’s actually water or juice or something? It’s kind of like that, only way more intense.

Another of my makeshift urinals. Bonus question: Would you be more likely to drink the contents of this can if it were filled with A) My urine or B) Diet Coke with Bacon? Pray that's a choice you never have to make.

I’m getting off track. The point is that at the time that I’m peeing in that can, it is just a little bit more convenient than walking all the way to the bathroom. Maybe it’s more work in the long term and I risk accidentally drinking my own pee, but I’m not fucking Nostradamus. I don’t have a crystal ball that I can use to look four or five hours into the future, so how the hell could I, or anyone else, for that matter, possibly anticipate how inconvenient a Coke can full of pee might potentially be?

The other location that I know and love bothers people just as much, if not more: The sink.

I have a long, rich history of peeing in the sink. I think that everyone that has known me from the ages of 17-24 has at least one story that ends with me peeing in their sink. Friends, family, my high school debate coach, the American Cancer Society – if there was a sink in the building, I probably peed in it.

The immediate question most people ask is “Why?”

I’m glad you asked.

1. It’s the perfect height. A toilet or a urinal is fairly close to the ground. What this means is that if you pee into it, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to have urine splashing everywhere. This isn’t a problem with a sink. Most sinks are a couple of inches below my wang, making them the perfect location to pee without splashing toilet water everywhere.

2. It’s the green way to pee. How much water does it require to flush a toilet or a urinal? I don’t have any idea. What I do know is that it takes far more than it does to splash some water around the sides of the sink.

3. It makes it easier to multitask. How many toilets have a mirror in front of them that you can use to brush your teeth, shave, or put in your contacts? Not that many. How many sinks do? Almost all of them. Sinks are, as I said earlier, also the perfect height for hands-free peeing, so not only are you in front of a mirror, making grooming easier, you have the use of both hands.

4. I find it vaguely entertaining. It doesn’t take much to entertain me, and thinking to myself “Look at me! Johnny Castle! Peeing in the sink!” is one of those little pleasures that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Don't be shy, ladies! Everyone can pee in the sink! P.S.: You don't go into a post about peeing in unusual locations expecting to be able to find a picture of Jessica Biel that you can shoehorn in. If you ever decide that Justin Timberlake is too successful, wealthy, funny and good looking for your tastes, give me a call Jessica!

5. Pee is sterile. Urine doesn’t taste very good (trust me on this one), but it’s clean. Hell, Vikings washed their clothes with urine, and if there’s one thing that the Vikings are known for, it’s their near obsessive-compulsive fixation on cleanliness.

Much like peeing in cans, the bunch of prudes that I hang out with think that peeing in the sink is a terrible practice. They think it’s an unhygienic, filthy way to empty your bladder. It might seem a little bit weird, but I’m not sure that it’s as bad as everyone thinks it is.

First of all, how much contact do you actually make with the bowl of your sink? Other than when you’re cleaning it, when is the last time that you touched anything but the faucets? Do you spend a lot of time licking the bowl of your sink, or rubbing your hands all over the inside? If you do, you’re the first person that I’ve met.

Second of all, everyone that I argue about this with talks about their sink like it’s this sacred, sterile part of their house. Really? You don’t spit in your sink a couple of times every day after brushing your teeth? You don’t rinse all of your beard trimmings and shaving cream down that thing? You don’t wash your face in it? You’re dumping little chunks of the food stuck in your teeth, your saliva, your beard stubble and all of the grease on your face into your sink every day. Would you really be comfortable performing surgery in that thing or eating pork chops out of it as it is?

EXACTLY.

I quit peeing in cans a few years ago – As one of my baby steps in my glacial crawl to maturity, I finally decided that I needed to spend some time finding ways to lower my daily risk of drinking my own urine, and that seemed like a good place to start ( Followed shortly by throwing away all of my Franzia boxed wine-shaped novelty colostomy bags).

Despite what I consider overwhelming evidence in support of the practice, the sink followed shortly thereafter. Despite the fact that I think it’s an ideal place to pee, everyone else considers it an awful location, and if keeping tension with my friends and family to a minimum means peeing in some water-wasting, low to the ground, shark infested toilet, well, that’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make for you guys. What can I say? I give until it hurts.

I’ll always fondly remember my sink peeing days, but much like having dignity or hair on my head, all good things must eventually end.

See you on Monday.