Awkward Moments in Dating: Sneaking Into The Men’s Room

(image via wikimedia)

There’s no easy way to say this; I once dated a woman who wanted to watch men pee in the public bathroom.

To be fair, it wasn’t her life-long goal, and it wasn’t the first thing she’d ever said to me.  It happened after we’d been going out for a while, and she was meeting a couple of my friends for the first time.

To set the stage, my girlfriend’s name was Danielle, and this particular date was at a college football game (I’d graduated a few years earlier) with my friend Kirk and his girlfriend Linda, who were also in their mid-20s.  Even though Danielle had never attended college, she was wearing a university jacket and had big intellectual glasses to impress my professional friends.

I didn’t really care, but she wanted my friends to think she was smart.  She had even brought a copy of Sense and Sensibility to use as a conversation starter.

Things had been going smoothly.  The game was entertaining. At some point, Kirk and I had started complaining about the communal troughs in men’s rooms at the stadium.  That’s when Danielle had blurted out:

“I’ve never seen a guy pee before!”

Luckily, nobody sitting around us in our section seemed to be listening.  The other team was backed up on their own end zone, and the defense had almost scored a safety, so everybody around us was cheering and yelling so that the quarterback couldn’t call an audible.  This made it tough for us to talk, but nobody could eavesdrop.  I really didn’t want anybody to eavesdrop.

Danielle then turned to me.  “Have you ever seen a woman pee?”

I rubbed my palm against my forehead.  Danielle was really attractive and had an engaging personality (that combination made my friends wonder why she went out with me), but there was some crazy stuff going on in her life, and that had led to some erratic behavior.  I could usually deal with weird stuff in private.  It was the public craziness that I tried to avoid.

“I’ve heard you a couple times,” I said reluctantly.  “I wasn’t trying to, I promise.”

Danielle placed her hand on my knee.  “I know I can’t watch you pee because you get stage fright,” she said.  “But I really want to see a bunch of guys pee into a tub.  And we’ve already paid for our tickets.”

This was back in the 1990s, when some old stadiums had men’s rooms with the communal pee trough.  If you don’t know what that is, it was just a long tub where guys who didn’t want to wait for an open stall would stand and relieve themselves shoulder-to-shoulder.  Communal pee troughs were a really bad idea, but we still used them.

“Admission to a football game does not guarantee women entry into the men’s room,” I said.  “Especially you.”

“I can look like a guy,” Danielle said.

Kirk (sitting to my right) stared, open mouthed.  “I don’t think so.”

Danielle began tying her hair up.  “Give me your cap,” she said to Kirk.

Kirk handed it over, looking to his girlfriend for permission, but Linda was staring at Danielle too.  Danielle then replaced her thick glasses with my dark sunglasses, and put my windbreaker over her college jacket to give her a bulkier, less feminine look.

I glanced at Danielle’s jaw line and neck; both definitely belonged to a woman.

“Look down and hunch your shoulders,” I told her.  That was her only hope.  She put her hands into my jacket’s pockets, raised her shoulders, and put her head down.  If nobody paid attention, maybe nobody would notice she wasn’t a man.  But she’d probably need more help.

Then she turned to me and announced in a loud fake deep voice:

“I need to take a leak!”

I really didn’t want to take my girlfriend to a public men’s room, but now Danielle had committed.  I had to back her play.  It was my responsibility as a boyfriend.

“I do too,” I said, even though I got stage fright at communals.

“So do I,” Kirk said.  I didn’t know if he was supporting me as a friend or if he just wanted to see what was about to happen.

“I’ve never seen three men go to the bathroom together,” Linda said.  “What are you going to talk about in there?”

Before anybody could answer, I turned to Danielle.

“You gonna read that in the men’s room?” I asked, pointing to my copy of Sense and Sensibility.

Danielle cleared her throat and continued with her fake voice, “This piece of shit?”  Then she gave the book to Linda.

“Men are allowed to read Jane Austen books,” Linda said.

“Not when I’m taking a leak!”

“You probably shouldn’t call any Jane Austen book a piece of shit,” I muttered to Danielle as we got up.

“I took drama in high school,” Danielle said. She attempted a male strut past me in our row.  “I’m staying in character.”

As Danielle squeezed past Kirk, he checked out her tight jeans, even though she was now a man.

“I’ll walk close behind her,” I said.  “You go in front.”  Once Kirk was in place, it was like a Danielle sandwich, but not in a vulgar way.  And that’s how we walked to the men’s room, Kirk in front, Danielle close behind and looking down, and me in the rear (again, not in a vulgar way).

As we entered the bathroom and got in line for the community urinal, we got hit by an intense fecal smell, but Danielle didn’t say anything.  All we could see were the backs of a line of guys hunching with their hands in front of them.  Men in front of us filled in the gaps as they finished relieving themselves.  Kirk whistled as he strolled to a gap but stopped when he got a couple dirty looks from other guys.  That was a good play on Kirk’s part, distracting other men who might notice Danielle.

A few seconds later, another hole in the line opened up, and Danielle took her place, two spaces from the left end of the trough line.  She hunched her shoulders and pretended to play with her zipper.  I really hoped she didn’t stay there long.  I really hoped she would take a quick peek, glance both directions, get the visual she wanted (whatever it was), and leave before anybody noticed.  Most guys are aware of the presence of others urinating around them, but they don’t want to make eye contact or look like they’re trying to make eye contact.

Danielle was lingering.  A hole opened up a couple spaces to her right.  I hesitated.  A guy behind me cleared his throat.  I knew I wasn’t going to do anything functional right then, but I had to go through the motions, so I took the spot.  I thought about fake sneezing and leaving the line to wash my hands.  But I didn’t have to.

Danielle did the unexpected.  She screamed.

It was quick, and it was high-pitched.  Even worse, it obviously came from a woman.  Every guy in the men’s room knew there was a woman in the communal pee trough.

*****

To be continued (in its original format) in my blog serial… The Literary Girlfriend: Interesting.

The original version of this story appeared on Dysfunctional Literacy as “The Literary Girlfriend: Embarrassing Public Behavior” on September 3, 2013.