piss-taking

piss-take: an offensive term for a parody, especially one that involves mockery or ridicule. So says my Encarta Concise English Dictionary. Two points here. First, I begin reading an article in this morning’s big paper wondering if it’s a piss-take. It’s not. Second, I want to say that the OED or the Australian Macquarie are my favourite dictionaries, but the Encarta is better.

I know enuresis: bed-wetting, or as Encarta delicately puts it, involuntary discharge of urine. Paruresis is its opposite: the inability to voluntarily discharge. Put another way, stage-fright, the inability to piss in public places, like the marvellous curving tiled urinal at the Rivoli.

The article surprises me because I’ve heard neither the word paruresis nor of the syndrome. But I suffer it, along with an estimated 1.5 million Aussie blokes who stand and wait. The article’s author, a major sufferer, describes it as like having a bloke inside your brain telling you that everyone’s watching you not pee, which ensures that you never do. I know this weirdness only too well.

It’s serious weirdness for some men, who can’t attend events that outlast their ability to delay pissing. The mere threat of someone entering the empty toilet where they stand, unzipped, dying to relieve themselves, is too much. Cubicles are usually OK, but not always. Agoraphobia is the result in extreme cases: these blokes can only piss at home, so they never leave home. 

My own paruresis is inconsistent, only striking on occasion, Most of the time I’m fine, feel no need to join the International Paruresis Society, nor to have a piss buddy who goes with me to public toilets. The piss buddy stands off but over time comes ever closer as you master pissing in company.

The silliness and embarrassment of standing with nothing happening can be acute. In my head I hear little boys asking their fathers, “Daddy, why is that man just standing there? He’s not doing anything.” They’ll think I’m a pervert, a frequenter of public toilets for no good reason.

If I’m at an individual basin when not-pissing happens, I edge closer so no one can see me not-pissing. I stare at the wall as if in satisfaction. But there’s no faking it at an extended urinal. Standing there with nothing happening is so-o-o-o-o obvious. Public announcements—“Bugger! It’s gone away”—are unconvincing.

Public pissing can be a great joy. One night in Bendigo Rock, the JRT and I all retire to the backyard and end up pissing simultaneously. Two of us roar laughing. The JRT seems to be smiling too.

Rock on.