I’ve never used a public bathroom, and neither has my best friend Jack. But there’s an hour or so left of the concert. We’re pressing down on our crotches and hopping to the berserk beat. There’s too much beer in us. The music is loud, vibrating our bladders. Throughout our lives, we’ve had confident bladders. They know what they can handle.
But a wet spot appears on my pants. So circular. So faint. Too small for concern. I show the blotch to Jack; he can’t help but make one too. “Oh no,” we say. Between songs, Jack asks a woman where the bathrooms are. She’s here alone. She looks too settled to be alone. She points in an ambiguous direction. “Are you sure?” I ask. “Bathrooms will be there,” she says. I thank her. Jack thanks her too and says, “We’ve never gone in public before.” He sounds wise, proud, as if he’s missed less of life because of it.
Jack and I go to an uncongested part of the stadium and loiter outside of a men’s room. We’re 36, beginning to gray, the left front of his head, the right front of mine. “Should we go in?” I ask. I’m not sure why we’re afraid of the bathroom, or if we even are. I know how to use a bathroom, of course. But in my jittery imagination, people keep coming into public bathrooms, never out, crowding me, pushing me against a urinal or into a stall.
“We shouldn’t,” Jack says. He’s concerned about breaking our streak. At parties, he has gathered flocks around our proud bladders and said, “Cosmo and I will be remembered in death as the men who, for some unclear reason, never pissed in a public toilet.”
The splotch on my pants grows, the wetness darker now but still contained. “We were dumb to get the beer,” I say. We can’t go into the bathroom. It’s unfair to ruin a streak before understanding what it means.
I step into the bathroom. Jack calls after me: “Why go? Why go?” He won’t follow me, so I open the door and drag him inside by the arm. It’s empty except for our unaccustomed bodies. The room smells clean, like no one could dirty it. All the stalls look functional. None of the tiles are cracked. And the lights are bright; missing the bowl would be impossible.
I’m surprised I know where everything is, so I say this to Jack. “Of course we do,” he says.
I walk up to a urinal and I’m happy. I didn’t expect to feel delighted, courageous, or at the very least relieved in front of this impersonal machine. I unzip my pants. The wet denim sticks to my leg but it’s easy to pee. I’m not sure what I was worried about. That the flusher wouldn’t work. That the water would overflow onto my flimsy shoes. Or that I’d disappoint Jack.
When I finish peeing, I feel refreshed, like I’ve taken a nap. I linger in front of the urinal and promise myself I’ll take better care of my bladder, my brain. Before I zip up my pants, I try to go again, to piss away any residual uneasiness, to prove that I went even once. I do pee again. Ah!
Above the urinal, someone wrote on a diagonal, Your secret’s safe with me. Was my urine a secret?
I zip up my pants and find Jack running in a circle in the center of the bathroom. He’s running, I assume at first, to prevent his body from realizing it’s in a public bathroom, to trick his mind into thinking no streak has been razed. But then he says, “Get me home. Now.” I say, “You didn’t pee?” He says, “Why would I do that?” I say, “The urinal wasn’t bad.” He says, “Of course it isn’t bad.” His pants are getting wetter, heavier. They’re sagging away from his hips. I ask, “Do you have to go more?” He says, “Piss? Yes.” “We’re forty minutes from home.” “I’m not breaking my record.” He presses his crotch against the wall to keep the rest inside.
We run out of the bathroom and search the stadium for a container to hold his piss. “This is silly,” I say. “So what,” he says. We grab a plastic soda cup from a concession stand but it looks too small for our purposes. We consider buying a lined tote bag, but $60 is too much for momentary comfort. “Just use the urinal,” I say.
Then we see an empty plastic bag sagged against the wall near a merch stand. I pick it up. “This?” I ask. “Yes, yes,” he says. I check for holes. “It’s fine,” he says. He pushes me against the wall and forces apart my hands to hold open the bag. He unzips his pants; there’s a heavy smell coming from his waist. “You have to do this here?” I ask. The crowd sways behind him. Jack starts to pee. I say, “This is really silly.” His eyes roll. I’m not sure why he needs me to hold open the bag. To prevent a mess. To punish me for using a urinal. Piss splashes up from the bag and hits my fingers. I’m nauseous. I’m a good friend. I don’t look at his penis. When Jack is done, I tie the bag and throw it in the garbage. Then I jog back to the bathroom. I wash my hands. I pee.
We catch the band’s final two songs. Our pants start to dry. Mine were wetter than I thought. We dance to air them out. Jack leans into me. He says something, but he doesn’t try to shout over the band, as if his words were intended for the concept of my ears instead of the actual organs. I say, “What?” He says, “Thank you, buddy, for trying your best to help.”
On the car ride back to Richmond, I drive with my hips balanced off the seat. My soiled pants touch nothing but my skin. Jack asks if that was my first close call with my bladder. His voice is deeper than usual, sarcastic. He sounds like my mother did when she couldn’t decide whether to be amused or incensed by my jumpiness as a child. I say, “Nope, no issues with my bladder since I was eight.” “What happened at eight?” “Nothing interesting.” “Tell me.” “I just had too much milk in the cafeteria and peed myself on the bus home.” “You should’ve pissed in your locker,” he says. I say, “Haven’t we talked about this before?” He tells me about the dozen or so close calls he’s had. To resolve them, he’s pissed on the side of the road, in water bottles, in the snow like an unbound dog.
Jack unzips his pants and pushes them down to his ankles. His underwear too. I say, “What’re you doing?” He says, “Ventilating myself.” I say, “Understandable.” I don’t mean that.
I always assumed Jack and I avoided public restrooms for the same reason. I didn’t know the reason, but I thought we must’ve had the same one. No, no, I kept away because I’d never been inside them before. And I guess Jack steered clear to test himself, to push himself, to prove he was mighty enough to live without something the rest of the world depended on.
I park in front of Jack’s apartment building. He doesn’t get out of the car. “Welcome home,” I say, “and sorry for the crazy night.” “It wasn’t crazy,” he says. He rolls his forehead against my windshield. He might be tearing up. He might still be drunk. I start to ask if he’s angry with me, but he takes off his shoes. He slides the pants and underwear, stiff from dried piss, off of his ankles. Then he opens the car door. “You’re gonna get arrested,” I say. “I’m so tired of having a bladder,” he says. He walks slowly to the front door of the apartment building and up the stairs.
I wait to see if Jack will come back down, clothes in hand, or clothed, to say goodnight, to tell me he doesn’t mind that I have a bladder. But the light in his apartment turns on. On his papery curtains, Jack’s shadow is mellow and friendly. I unzip my pants. They’re less stiff than his looked, less soiled. They imply an inferior dedication to the cause. I slide my pants down my hips but keep my underwear on. I wait to see if Jack will look out the window in search of his pal. He doesn’t.
***
I call Jack the day after the concert. I ask if he’s ever been to hot yoga, another space I’ve yet to enter.
My body owes so many of its movements to Jack, and his to mine. Four years ago, we led each other into what became our favorite sandwich shop. He walked through the door first but I got to the counter before him and we stared side by side at the menu. Before that day, I could never bring myself to go in there alone. Now I know they have the creamiest grilled cheeses. We also took each other to the family-run movie theater with the chewy malted milk balls for the first time. And the shiny hardware store. And the nail salon that makes a point to swear by the cleanliness of its tools. I’ve been back to all those places. Many times. Alone even. There’s something about my body that doesn’t fully work alone. It must be fear, although I don’t feel like a scared person. It must be shyness, laziness. Or a sense that my body is too fragile to enter an unfamiliar space. I enjoy crossing a threshold as two bodies. Jack has brazen hips that know where to walk. I have smiley eyes that know how to bat and say hello.
Jack’s voice is far from the phone. “I’m a no for hot yoga,” he says. “But we’re bendy,” I say. “I’m a no for hot yoga.” He’s home. I hear the microwave beep. “Bring a different friend,” he says. But no one else knows how to lead and follow my body at the same time. “Or go by yourself,” he says. He knows I won’t do that. I say, “There’s still so many things I haven’t done.” I hear a watery splash through the phone. It sounds like Jack is peeing.
***
I start using the bathroom at the gym. I feel foolish and delicate comparing it to the one at the stadium, but I do. The gym bathroom is worse. The three urinals are too close to the stalls, so feet sometimes bleed under the wobbly partitions. There are only two stalls, one small, the other always in use. The bathroom butts up against the lockers, so when the changing area is crowded and when the toilets and urinals are occupied there’s nowhere out of the way to wait. When I have to piss and I find bodies at the urinals, I walk back toward the lockers and then back to the urinals and then to the lockers again, and then I try the stalls but they’re full, so I get bounced toward the urinals but they’re full. They’re full until they’re not, and that’s when I go. Of course that’s when I go.
***
Jack comes by my apartment to get the small can of oxblood paint stored under my sink. Three years ago, to save money, we made our bedrooms the same color. Still, our friends knew us as the men who didn’t use public bathrooms, not the men who slept beneath an identical earthy hue.
He shakes the tiny bucket and asks if it’s fresh. “I got us more a few months ago,” I say. “So good to me,” he says. I put the best pillow for his back on the couch. He sits down. He stands up. He stares at the kitchen and bathroom and couch, and hardens his stance as if my apartment feels too public.
Jack and I have been best friends since college, since we were roommates freshman year, since we got our third roommate transferred to a dorm on the other side of campus for stealing our sunscreen and peanut butter and birthday money. But to be friends because of a room assignment felt so arbitrary and nonspecific, at least to Jack. I’m not sure I had that insecurity. But then we were at a lecture and my leg was shaking and Jack said, “Have to piss?” and I said, “Badly,” and he said, “I’ll let you know if you miss anything,” and I said, “I don’t go in public.” He grinned and patted my leg and whispered, “Me neither,” in my nervous ear. We left the lecture. We ran back to our dorm. I relieved myself.
Jack starts for my front door but I pull him to the couch. “What’re you doing?” he asks. “Just wanna hang,” I say. “Well don’t force me,” he says. And I say, “Well you forced me to help you piss at the concert.”
He holds the bucket of paint to his stomach and relaxes into the couch. I join him. Jack says sorry and looks to the ceiling as if to keep the apology from floating sweetly to me. He must be mad. He must think my bladder, my body, are too different from his. Then he giggles and says, “I love you more than my bladder.” “You hate your bladder.” “Regardless, I love you more.”
Jack stiffens up, I think. He angles away from me, maybe. His movements are small and private today. His thighs might be clenching or not. His fist might not be a fist but gently curled fingers. Today he has mastery over his body. I’m not sure when he learned that. Usually when his feet or hands tense, my arms were pressed to my body before that, and his brow was already furrowed, and my teeth had been grinding for a time, so it would be ridiculous to guess whose body became stressed first.
I say, “I’m sorry I used the urinal.” He says, “Why are you sorry about that?” Then he hugs me and kisses my cheek and stands from the couch and stretches his spine. He tosses and catches our red paint. He leaves. I don’t hear from him for three weeks.
***
Let me go to hot yoga.
I drive to the studio alone with my grippy mat rolled up in the passenger seat. It was raining earlier, just sprinkling now, weather meant to be danced in. I roll down the window. There’s no one on the streets. Rain droops into the car and sticks to my face. Then the smell of piss is here. How odd: rain stenched like piss. But no, the rain is reanimating the piss dried to the seat. Jack’s piss or mine. Both. I try to make myself feel like Jack is in the car, like we’re driving to yoga, us both, like we’re guiding each other’s bodies, us both. I park and wipe up the rain with an old napkin. I wipe up the piss too.
I wait in the car. Fifteen minutes until class starts. The lights are on in the building but no one walks in. It might be closed. This is why I need Jack: to see alongside him that a place is real, that a room is meant for my body. I thought that’s why he needed me too. I’m not sure why public spaces feel so unsuitable. It can’t be unlikely that my body needs similar things to those beside me. Perhaps I am a scared person. I convinced myself I wasn’t because Jack wasn’t. I can’t go into the building alone, a transition from too private to too public. I might get squashed in the process.
A car parks beside mine. The driver, cracking her neck, yawning, hydrating, has a yoga mat in the back seat. When she grabs the mat and steps out of the car, I get out too. Follow her. Lead her. I take my mat and walk behind her unrushed gait. But she’s too slow and I pass her. I lose track of her behind me. In front of me is a door I’ve never touched. I get closer to the door, staring at its chipped red logo, a blobby form with its leg behind its head. I can put my leg behind my head. I can split. I can engage my core. I need Jack here. Without him, my body is unbeholden to me. It drifts to the left or the right without reason, as if it’s threatening to tip over, or to stop.
When I get to the door, I turn around and head back to the car. The woman nods as I pass her. I hear her walk into the studio. Her flip flops are snapping and happy.
A breeze nudges me behind the wheel of my car. Push me the other way.
***
It’s surprising how many comments are written on bathroom walls. That must not be news to the rest of the world, but I can’t imagine anyone having the hubris to leave a message for the pants-down. Nevertheless, the bookstore bathroom says Marry me, Virginia Woolf. At the grocery store, Call (703) 200-0900 for gay head. I see I’m here a lot, and Have a good day. And You do you. And Use the Force. Maybe they’re being silly in a place of piss and shit. Or bathroom walls are the only surface where their comments can be public and private at once. The more notes I find, the more jealous I get. It baffles me that anyone can take out a marker in the bathroom and use their mind on the wall when I can barely use my body.
No, I know bathrooms now. On a day the gym isn’t busy, I take a blue marker from my bag. The smaller stall is free. I sit on the toilet, first with my shorts on, and then with them off; it feels wrong to be here in an uncompromised state. I have to pee, so I do. Then at eye level, I write, Special. I’m not sure what I mean but I’m smiling. I’m not sure what I mean but my body feels resolved, as if where it is and where it’s not and what it can’t do is unimportant. I underline my Special. Then I write, Why not go for the streak of longest friendship? But no, bathrooms are meant for vague messages or raunchy ones. Not for the insecure. So I spit on the wall. I wash away the thought before it dries.
***
I wake up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday and don’t need to pee. I sit on the toilet and try anyway but nothing comes out.
At 7, Jack calls. He says, “Are you doing anything today? No? We’re going on a road trip. Atlanta. Eight-hour drive. Hotel for the night. I’ll come pick you up.” I missed my friend. I don’t ask for details. I say, “See you soon.”
At 8, we’re on the road. I’m buzzing in the passenger seat beside Jack. He says, “I just felt like driving.” I’m careful not to seem out of alignment. We don’t talk much, and when we do it’s as if we’re in two separate cars moving at different speeds. I speak and he nods as if he can’t hear me but pretends to. And I have a hard time following his train of thought. Something about the time his toilet bowl cracked and we couldn’t stop the water? Something about our visit to Palm Springs, the canyons, the shuffleboard? He does seem to have missed me. But often when he drives, he keeps looking over at me to talk, like it’s paining him that we’re in seats facing forward; I usually have to remind him to watch the road.
Jack reaches into the back seat and pulls out two water bottles. He hands one to me. He chugs his, so I follow suit. The water is warm. It sits heavy in my stomach. I toss our empty bottles by my feet and say, “Today was the first morning of my life that I didn’t need to pee.” He laughs. He looks at me. He says, “Your bladder is beneath you.”
When we cross into North Carolina, Jack stops at a diner. We get out of the car. I try to walk as a pair. But he leads me inside, moving with quick but trudging steps, as if I’m a weight tied to his core. The booths here have partitions the height of semi-private fitting rooms, and when we’re seated, I feel anxious to knock down the thin, gray barriers or to build them up higher so we can be in public or in isolation, not both.
We order. The waiter asks for our menus but Jack insists on keeping his, and he reads through the items, looking down away from me, studying each page, studying each page again. There are 12.
Scraping off the gum under the table with my nail, I think to myself, Jack is a good friend, Jack loves me, he loves no one else but me and his mom, he is the back of my head, and I’m the back of his, and no part of the head should be missing.
I say, “You can change your order.” Jack puts down the menu. He says, “What did you get?” I sip my water and say, “Same as you.” He says, “What did I get?” “Pancakes.” My tongue is dry and upset, so I finish my glass. He says, “Be careful, you’ll have to go to the bathroom.” I shrug and say, “That’s fine.” “We still have six hours to drive.” “That’s fine.” “We’re not stopping after this.” “My bladder isn't needy today, I’ll be fine.” “You’ll have to pee.” “Then I’ll go here,” I say, “it’s fine.” And Jack chews on his cheek and plays with a sugar packet and weighs his head side to side, perhaps unsure why he’s bothered. But he is bothered.
Jack is hogging the pancake syrup when I realize I have to pee. I’ve gotten so used to being near reliable urinals that my bladder almost releases the second I notice it’s full. I say, “I’m gonna use the restroom.” I stand without looking for Jack’s reaction. It must be twisting, sour.
It’s a one-person bathroom: my favorite. But I like all kinds now. They’ve all become private to me. I sit down on the toilet and pee. When I’m done, I don’t leave the bathroom. I’m too angry at Jack. My face is hot, the rest of my body too. The toilet seat warms up, as if it’s part of my skin. I don’t understand how a friendship hinges on the use of a bathroom. I’ve taken Jack to the hospital for an infected foot. He’s brought me to his parents’ condo for three Christmases, for a Thanksgiving; I gave them a bird feeder. I’m a helpful friend. I let him pretend we were boyfriends at our college reunion; all night, we giggled and cuddled on each other’s puffy chests. I’m a loving friend.
The toilet paper dispenser is at shoulder height. I rest my head on the cushiony roll and assure myself I don’t need Jack in my life. I need very little. I didn’t need public toilets until recently.
When my resentment quiets, I walk out of the bathroom to find an elderly man holding the local paper to his crotch and bouncing up and down in distress. I apologize for the wait. At the table, Jack has finished his pancakes. He says, “Are you okay? What took you so long?” My pancakes are buttery, delicious. I focus on them instead of Jack.
In the car, we keep to ourselves and listen to a podcast about free will. It’s unclear if we have it. It’s unclear if we control our feelings, our disappointments, our bladders.
Jack coughs and pauses the podcast. He tries to look over to me and says, “I don’t know why I’ve been feeling so off.” He presses play but decides to talk more. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s like my brain has forgotten that we’ve been friends half our lives. Or something has.”
We try to sustain a conversation–“I really liked those pancakes,” “I don’t believe in free will”–but our voices skid against each other. Any momentum we gain is killed by the abrupt end of a sentence. Periods are not our friends. They push our mouths away from each other. And with our mouths turned away, our laughs have no chance to be real.
Our relationship can’t help what it was built on, I know. But if someone had told me how precariously it sat… If I knew how seriously he took the synchronicity of our bodies…
We pass into Georgia. The more we drive, the further I feel from our friendship, like there is a thick rubber band tying me to Jack but it’s caught around a pole planted three states behind us, a pole that stretches us two feet apart for every foot we move.
If I could drag myself into rooms without Jack… If I could own my body without Jack…
We park at a motel 10 miles outside of Atlanta. “We’re staying here?” I ask. “If that’s fine with you,” he says. Jack rolls his temple on the steering wheel as if he’s losing track of himself and working to quiet his mind. I hope his mind is loud because of me. But it might not be. His mother’s been sick: chronic pneumonia. And his father is a mysterious man.
Jack wears a sad, distant, it’s-a-confusing-day gaze, which I catch when his head rolls around toward me.
I want Jack to be my friend. Or I want Jack to be my magnet.
I look down at my lap and say, “I’ve never used a public bathroom before.” Jack doesn’t respond to the comment, so I say, “I’ve gone inside a public bathroom but I’ve never peed or shat or washed my hands.” Jack picks up his head from the steering wheel and leans it between our bodies. “You have used a bathroom,” he says. “Not a public one,” I say. “You have.” “I haven’t.” He starts to reposition his head over his shoulders until I say, “I haven’t, I really haven’t, not ever, I never will.” “You have.” “No, no. No, no.”
He releases his body into mine. I forgot how round his chin is. He has almondy hair. I hold him tight. The water in my gut flows toward his. And his toward mine, I suppose.
Jack and I walk to a bar near the motel. We peed before we left. We washed our hands too. The exterior of the bar is narrow and pink with a door that might need to be pulled or pushed. I’m not sure. I’m not sure I need Jack to accompany me inside. If he could wait on the street as I start to walk in… If he could yell, “Push, push,” before I reach toward the door… That could be enough for my twitchy mind.
Jack tries to push open the door and then pulls. He holds the door for me, and I walk in first. I lead him to the bar. He calls over the bartender and I order for us both. We pull out our stools at the same time. We say, “It’s quiet in here,” at the same time too. I feel safe, for a time. But then we’re leaning away from each other. He drops his head to the bar. We talk about the lopsidedness of the pool table and the flannel pillowcases back at the motel. Not much else.
Max Kruger-Dull holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Story Magazine, West Branch, The Greensboro Review, the minnesota review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his boyfriend and two dogs. For more, please visit maxkrugerdull.com.
Photo by: Markus Spiske