Have you ever tried peeing outside? As a guy, I think your body just doesn’t really care, I mean you can whip that thing out anywhere and you’re happy. No extreme squatting over gross toilet seats, no hover maneuvers in high heels or dragging a bathing suit all the way across to one side and creating a massive front-end wedgie. Seriously, your clothes are predetermined and made exclusively for easy access to draining the main vein. The most controversy with men peeing is when shaking it turns into the inappropriate toying with.
I went outside after the composting toilet incident and awkwardly surveyed the prime spot in the yard to practice my bend and pee. Should I lurk near the house? That seems kind of gross, like peeing just outside the door to your tent. How far is far enough? I’d rather not go into the wooded and brushy portion of the apple orchard for fear of the elusive snapping turtle or dangerous snake. In the end, I stationed myself between the propane tank and the greenhouses so I could be shielded from both the neighbors and the main house. That still made two sides completely open to the “perpetual pervert.”
In civilization, mothers teach their daughters to fear this person; this pervert who happens to lurk nearby at all times and is heavily into the creeping. “Don’t change in front of that window before you close the blinds,” she says, shaking her finger back and forth in your face. Don’t do this, don’t do that.
He is the boogeyman of our generation. Probably the reason I still lock my doors at every possible instance or never entrust my car to stay put while I walk into the store for just a moment. The perpetual pervert. He is everywhere and nowhere at once.
So, I’m sidled down in the mowed grass and still do the to and fro glances like I’m about to cross a busy street while trying not to get run down. I unbutton my jeans, which in itself, is super awkward while outdoors. I think I might have performance anxiety around grass…
I laugh to myself as I pop a squat with my jeans as strategically placed as possible around my extremely pale thighs. It was a nervous laugh, no doubt. I had to restrain myself to keep from looking around while huddled in my own personal blind spots. And then I waited.
And waited.
Nothing happened. Now, at this point I really had to pee. The only reason I’ll actually remove my pants in a meadow is for relief. I knew I really had to pee. My body knew it. But my body also knew that I usually have a toilet under my ass and that this situation was horribly different from the ordinary.
I was thinking of water falls and gently flowing streams, counting raindrops like the sheep of nightfall. Nothing worked for me. It was as if my bladder had gone dry from sheer terror of being outside with my pants at my ankles. I sat there, again very awkwardly, until I too gave up on my venture. Then, as if someone might be watching still, I acted so satisfied with my peeing adventure, shaking my hips briefly before whipping up my jeans and heading back inside.
First times are always super awkward.
Sitka or Bust: Commute The World 