How to Think Like a Woman and Pee Like a Man

A rumination on public bathrooms and other indignities of elimination lead to a surprising find.

I seem to be producing a new genre of Medium fare these days: potty-lit.

Last week, as I straddled an airline-cabin toilet bowl, I — who prefer the pronouns she and her — fretted. I imagined a day in the far-off future when I might not be able to pee standing up. Naturally, I wrote about it

“Old People Say the Darndest Things” was inspired, in part, by aging, in larger part, by having a sense of humor about it all.

This story, in contrast, is about why I prefer to pee like a man — and the surprising discovery I made once I decided to ponder this gender-fluid* practice.

(*Pun intended; others sprinkled throughout; I can’t help myself!)

Oh, and let me get this out of the way: As a kid, I was envious of my male cousin Ronnie but not, Dr. Freud, because he had a penis. He could aim.

But I digress. Stay with me, especially the ladies. Or, if you’re Lee Bench, who left this intriguing comment on my last bit of potty lit.

Sliding the biology and anatomy issues to the side, your story resonates even with us guys. Well said.

When I read Lee’s comment, I was mid-stream writing this story, so I answered…

Thanks, Lee. But I want to know HOW does it “even resonate(s) with us guys”? I think I’m onto a whole new genre: potty lit!

Lee, I hope you enjoy my second offering in that genre.

Pregnant-by-Toilet-Seat

Inever believed I could get pregnant from sitting on a dirty toilet seat, no matter how many times I was told that as a kid. Clueless as we were in the fifties, we could tell fact from fiction.

Well, I could; I was the youngest of three by 11 and 9 years. You grow up fast when you eavesdrop and have half a brain.

But seriously, who’d believe that those little swimmers would, or even could, hang out on a toilet seat, just waiting for a virgin vagina to sit down? Hey, baby, come and get it!

Also farfetched and — spoiler alert — graphic is imagining how the little guys would get there. Granted, it’s not a stretch to think men/boys have sex — solo or otherwise — in a public bathroom.

However, as a member of what was once considered the “opposite sex,” I’m sketchy on the details. Do men pee into the toilet bowl and then, as an afterthought, ejaculate onto the seat — or is it the other way around, they need to pee after jerking off?

Either way, pregnant-by-toilet-seat is an urban myth — shockingly, Googleable even today. Let me assure you, it had no bearing on my childhood, but the nastiness of public toilets certainly did.

My Big Fat Public Restroom Education

I don’t remember exactly when it started — probably as a toddler — but I visit the first public restroom with my mother, Henrietta. Being “clean” is paramount to her generation — the stalwart GIs. Naturally, she hands down that sense of hygienic urgency to her children.

Dutiful daughters of the 1950s frequented mostly beauty parlors, clothing stores, and restaurants with our mothers. Mine exhorts me to act “like a lady” wherever we go. Sometimes, we wear white gloves. Think Schraffts.

But no matter how civilized and safe those women-friendly venues are, at some point…you gotta pee. That means a visit to the Ladies’ Room.

My big fat public restroom education unfolds in stages. At first, my mother holds me over the toilet. I have only vague memories of this, but I get the message: It’s bad to touch a public toilet seat.

Next stage, I’m still too short to squat over the bowl, so Henrietta lines the offending seat with toilet paper. My tender tush must never touch the seat.

She carefully shows me how to place each piece. And as I gingerly climb aboard, she anchors the paper in place with her long, narrow fingers. Otherwise, the tissue might flutter prematurely into the bowl or, worse, onto the tiled, germ-encrusted floor.

My education is thorough and long-lasting. I still recoil at the idea of sitting directly on a public toilet.

Of course, we’re all different. You might not be as prissy or squeamish as I am. You can plop down on any toilet seat without giving it a second thought.

Still, I suspect most of us agree that public restrooms are not pleasant places. There is nothing restful about them, especially when you reach for the toilet paper and discover there’s none.

Of course, the most obvious problem is no fault of the bathroom itself. It’s that we — roughly half of all humans — lack the proper equipment to pee standing up.

Not to worry…. help is already here!

To this day, I don’t feel comfortable plunking down my privates on an unprotected public seat. You might prefer standing, too, although your reasons could be different.

If you’re younger — and almost everyone is these days — you’ve been shaped by more recent forces in herstory (or to be more inclusive, do we now call it theystory?) You might even believe that standing up or sitting down to pee is a choice — your right, assigned or assumed gender be damned!

Whatever your scenario, there’s a vaginal adapter for you. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing. To wit, an entire page on Amazon is devoted to “female urinals.”

As I often say about writing non-fiction, “I can’t make this shit up!”

Steve Jobs famously boasted that he created products we didn’t know we needed. Maybe companies manufacturing products like the She-Wee, “the ORIGINAL female urination device since 1999,” or the no-fuss-no-muss disposable Urinelle, are hoping for similar success.

The timing seems right on: Between the over-scheduling of adults and children, a burgeoning epidemic of incontinence, and an up-and-coming younger generation that embraces fluidity, a urinal-on-the-go could end up in millions of women’s purses.

The Takeaway:

The good news: Gender differences are blurring. Easy-peeing is now available to all of us!

Too bad Frankie and Grace won’t be back for an eighth season. They’ve already had story lines about adult vibrators and a toilet that helps the sitter “rise up” from the can. Imagine the laughs they’d get with a She-Wee.

I’m not rushing out to the store just yet. But some day, in the very far-off future, when my own elimination rituals need tweaking — either because of where or how I am — I just might give one of these handy products a test run.

Not sure my mother would approve, but — hey! — this is the price of progress.

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