Part of the Archival Series
Originally Written 6 February 2022 for magazine writing course @ UMass Amherst
Image courtesy of Wix Media
Last summer, I achieved Official Man Status: no more uterus. My gender is validated.
There’s something liberating, now that my bladder doesn’t have to share gut space with an organ I wasn’t even using. With my uterus’ removal, my bladder finally got the extra space it’s always desperately needed. I don’t have to go pee as often. Big win.
As a kid, I always had the bad habit of having to go pee at the most inconvenient times.
Family trip to an amusement park in New Hampshire? The whole car had to stop in
butt-fuck-nowehere Massachusetts so Maxx could use the toilet in some seedy gas station on the side of the road. In the middle of a really enthusiastic game of pretend at the park in the summertime? Maxx was holding his breath while peeing in the nasty Porta Potty outside the park’s welcome center. It became a bit of a joke with family and close friends. I was always asked before we left the house, Did you go pee? Because everyone knew that if we had to stop, it would be for me to pee.
I got used to it and owned it as I got older. I have a child’s bladder, I used to warn, small
and shy. After years of having to pee in the grossest places because of my frequent need to take a piss, I had developed an aversion to peeing around others. A bit ironic, since I always had to do it at the worst times and in the worst places.
In the time before - the pandemic, my complete hysterectomy and oophorectomy, my top
surgery - I’d be able to give a top five worst places to suddenly need to pee:
1. Airplanes. Turbulence. 2. Buses. No toilet. 3. Traveling on the road. That means either a bush or a rest stop. I’d rather take the bush; the men’s room is always a disaster. I don’t have a penis, but cis guys, how hard can it be to aim something attached to you or, barring that, clean up after yourself? I have to sit to pee. Trust me, I don’t want to sit on your mess. I’m not into that sort of thing. 4. Church. Can we say, ‘judgey stares’? 5. Trains. You can’t just stop a train. And then you have to wait.
Trains are the worst.
Imagine: it’s 10pm in October. The door of the soba noodle restaurant in Midtown
Manhattan closes behind me and the tightening urge to go hits. Nicole, my college best friend, sees my face, turns to the door, but lo and behold, it’s locked because we had stayed until closing. She lives in Brooklyn, just a 45 minute train ride away, if the New York MTA ever had its shit together. But it never does.
We board the JMZ line. I’m getting antsy as the pressure in my abdomen builds, the
swaying of the train sloshing my bladder’s contents inside me. Movement makes it worse, makes it feel like it can all just spill out from my mouth. Nicole tries to distract me with an audio book, but my flavor of ADHD makes my brain shut down its auditory processing so that doesn’t work. Thirty minutes in, the train just stops. Construction, the disembodied voice floating above us says. Minor inconvenience, it continues. Slight delay, it concludes.
Absolutely not, I say. Forty-five minutes after that, Nicole and I hop off at the next stop
in search of a toilet I can sit on.
There’s a certain pain that starts in your abdomen, this desperation that comes from
having to really lean into the kegel exercises you never really did when your doctor said, You might want to look into that if you find it difficult to hold your bladder. It wasn’t difficult. I just have a child’s bladder: small and shy. But squeezing to keep the pee in means you put pressure on the very sensitive bladder you’re trying not to irritate. You walk like you’re a particularly bad ice-skater, trying not to wipe out on the ice - this undignified waddle.
Nicole sees a street sign and remembers. There’s a Korean BBQ she was dragged to for
an intolerable coworker’s birthday. Since she’s had a map of the City imprinted in her brain since birth, she realizes it’s nearby. It’s open until midnight.
It’s 11:15pm.
I waddle down streets and across crosswalks when the light is still green for the
intersecting side, following. The pain is a dull ache, filled to the brim past what you can hold, pressure on all sides. Picture a jiggling water balloon that your naive, little cousin is filling up. You watch the rubber distend, the water bubbling, and you think to yourself with relish, damn thing’s about to pop all over them in 3, 2, 1…
The Korean BBQ is still open. Nicole has to pee now too. She runs over to the women’s
room around the corner of the cozy space, a little platform before us where drunks slur out their karaoke prayers. Weary staff are wiping down tables and eyeing our entrance with barely disguised irritation.
I run into the men’s room, almost nauseous with the urge to go, and run into the worst
problem of the night: the only stall is out of order.
Maybe it’s because I have to take a seat when I pee, but I will never understand why
cisgender men get their own fancy contraption to take a piss, or why it dominates every restroom set aside for the male gender. There are usually four or five urinals for every one or two stalls. Do cis men not also need to take a seat to shit? Is this some inherent masculinity issue where because they have their own piss contraption as a mark of status they have to over use it? Cis men can pee in toilets. They do it at home (I hope). They can even sit to pee with a penis! But most don’t; sitting to pee is more culturally common for those who identify as women or have anatomy that makes it nigh impossible (or at least hilariously difficult) to pee standing up. And why would a (cis)man stop to sit and pee when he has a special contraption that society made for him to stand and do it? He doesn’t have to take the time and stop.
But I do.
I pass decently for a cis man. Thanks to my Portuguese genes, I have a thick, full beard, a
strong jaw, and shrewd eyes. My voice usually just makes people think I’m queer (which I am, so good on them, I suppose). Sure, it’s usually uncomfortable and irritating to enter a bathroom full of men and have to sit, wait and pretend to take a dump after I pee just so that I don’t get clocked as not being cis, potentially putting my safety at risk to bigots. But the dysphoria really rears its head, not when I have to look at my own nether bits, but when the disadvantage of having them gets thrown in my face. I look like I can use a cis man’s bathroom. I usually sound like I can use a cis man’s bathroom. But when the only stall in the place is out of order and there are men chatting at the five urinals on the wall so I can’t crawl under and use the toilet anyway, it’s made so salient to me that this is a cis man’s bathroom, not the men’s room.
I walk out of the bathroom as gingerly as I can, getting hot and cold flashes waiting for
Nicole. I’m close to actual tears. Is it the pain from holding my overfull bladder or the shame at what just took 30 seconds to transpire as I stood in masculinity limbo? Eh, probably both. I’m emotionally sensitive and really had to pee.
Nicole comes out, sees my face, and says there’s a handicap/family stall around the
corner. Wonderful, but you know what? It’s occupied, because right when my last salvation makes itself known, I feel like I’m literally going to wet myself. I lock my wobbly knees, take a deep breath and stand outside until the woman who was taking her sweet-ass time comes out. I bolt in, bolt the door, and pee for a minute and a half without stopping. Just – a steady stream. Agony. When I’m done, I’m not sure if I’m actually done because I still feel like I have to go. It’s humiliating. And a little hilarious.
I love being a trans man. I love being queer. Sometimes, though, I wish I had a penis.
Sometimes, I wish I were cis. Mostly though, once I get past that dysphoric self-loathing and love my diverse body again, I wish the world wasn’t so weird about masculinity and sitting to pee. But lately? I’m just so glad my ‘child’s bladder: small and shy’ has extra space.
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