Real Man Adventures (12 page)

21 out of 31, or approximately 68% of the subjects, responded to my query—the 10 deadbeats having obviously decided they were too proper to discuss such matters with me. (I assured all potential subjects that I would be using first names only, should anybody be quoted in the study—and still there was 32% attrition. Thanks, guys: way to really show you care about the advancement of science.)

The results:
²

       •   To Japan’s 40%, 11 out of 21, or approximately 52% of my homeys
³
said yes, they do sometimes sit to urinate.

       •   10 out of 21, or approximately 48%, responded no. A sample of the comments accompanying the no’s (most of them decidedly emphatic
⁴
):

“No. Never ever, so zero percent. Never.” —Doug

“Fuck no. Never. And I insist you use my full name.” —Adam Mansbach

“No. And I don’t sit down when I’m too drunk to aim well, because that would lead to falling asleep right there.” —Alex

“The yogis sit and cut off the flow like a kegel a few times because they think it’s good for the prostate. Not me. I did that for a while but missed the sound made from high above.” —David

“NO, NEVER. Drunk peeing is fun; I like to make designs and letters and dance peeing. But toilet texting is harder and I’m afraid I may drop the phone in the toilet. Many people who sit to pee find it more productive, so they can use both hands on their mobile devices.” —Danny
⁵

“No. Only if I am on the phone and don’t want the person to know I’m peeing, although sometimes I just piss [while] on the phone and tell them I’m running the water.” —Scott S.
⁶

“The ONLY time I pee sitting down is if I think I’m throwing a number two, but it’s a false alarm.” —Munson

Of the 52% yeses, I requested that these respondents estimate the percentage of the time they sit to pee. Averaging all of their self-reported sit-to-pee percentages, I found that this segment of my sample sits on the toilet 35.5% of the time.

There was a slight complication with the validity of this figure, as not every fellow reported an exact percentage to me, and some broke down their sitting-to-pee habits by time of day (for instance: “100% during the night, 80% when I get up, then 10% during the day” —Trac
⁷
) or location (“20%. Only at home or work.” —Mo). Others further complicated my analysis with responses like the following, which was very illuminating overall, but not very helpful statistically speaking:

“I will sit to pee in the middle of the night so I don’t have to turn on any lights, and when I am at the home of a woman—it’s a respect thing because no matter how great a guy’s aim may be, there’s no hitting the target 100% of the time, and I’m not going to make a female friend clean up any pee I may have missed in my attempts to wipe down the rim (if only guys live at a house, then I stand). The other time I’ll sit is after orgasm because the stream is just too unpredictable and all over the place after coming, so why even try to hit the target while standing? When drunk I could usually care less about hitting the target, so unless at a female friend’s home (see
above), I’ll just stand.” —Spencer
⁸

In addition to the drunk-peeing theme running through the comments (a circumstance I likely telegraphed by suggesting it as a possible reason to sit to pee in the introduction to my survey), I uncovered a few other areas of note. The first, as introduced by Spencer above, is the theme of:

COURTESY TO WOMEN

“40%. When I’m home and it’s the middle of the night. Any other time at home, I have to put the seat back down anyway, being the considerate guy that I am, so why not just have a sit?” —Scott C.
⁹

“A) When I’m drunk. B) When I get up in the middle of the night. C) When I am the only guy in a private bathroom full of girls at a party.” —Madison

And then there’s LITERARY/ARTISTIC circumstance:

“4%. I do it to read something short, like a poem in the
New Yorker
.” —Jaime

“Rarely. I will sit if there is a good book on the top of the toilet, and I want to read it for a few minutes.” —Shannon
¹⁰

“70%. I sit to pee when at my home or someone else’s home. I stand when I’m recording music, as I drink a lot of water to keep my voice fresh, and that naturally causes me to pee quite often.” —Andy

“20%. My sitting-to-pee experiences began in my early 40s, along with having to start wearing reading glasses and forgetting to leave the house with stuff I need… like reading glasses; though I like sitting to pee a lot better than those two things.” —Mo
¹¹

“During the day depends on whether it’s summer/I’m home/in undies, or whether I’m at work/in tight pants. Easier to take off = easier to sit down to pee. Also, when I arrive, if the seat is down, I sit. If it’s up, I don’t.” —Trac
¹²

And finally, of utmost relevance to me and my particular motivations for conducting this study:

PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE RESTROOMS

“30–40%. But NEVER in men’s rooms; too many Cro-Mag dudes were never civilized in the art of, ‘If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the seatie.’” —Brent

“Only at home. Never in public restrooms.” —Jaime

“I ALWAYS stand when I’m in a public bathroom.” —Andy

“100% at home. 0% if I’m in a place of questionable cleanliness such as a public restroom.” —Frane

This latter comment I found most revealing and summarizing. It suggests to me a staggering variance in the sitting-to-pee demographic—attesting to just how truly revolting most men’s public restrooms are. So in conclusion, as I strongly suspect every time I personally am sitting in a disgusting stall within one, nobody (else) sits down to pee on toilets in men’s public restrooms unless he is taking a crap (or thinks he is likely to). Hey, an upside to looking Muslim in the post-9/11 world! What’s a little extra harassment at the airport, when I can simultaneously seem completley “normal” in the men’s room?

_______________________________

1
. A German term meaning “one who sits to urinate,” with implied undertones of weakness and being hen-pecked or effeminate.

2
. I analyzed the data using what little I could recall from a Probability and Statistics course I took senior year in high school, in which the teacher let us watch VHS movies of our choice during class every Friday and most Mondays—because he “just didn’t feel like math sometimes.”

3
. Gay, straight, young and old, and of varying races.

4
. Given the slight whiff of macho-with-a-sprinkle-of-gyne-/homophobia implied in some of the HELL NO, I WOULD NEVER BE SUCH A PUSSY AS TO SIT TO PEE–themed responses I received, I was surprised that 30% of the emphatic nos turned out to be from gay subjects, whom I’d thought might be a little more sensitive to the pitfalls of stereotyping. But maybe that just makes me homophobic to be surprised by that.

5
. I have no idea what the fuck he’s saying.

6
. I struggled with whether to put this respondent into the yes or no category. I went with no because upon follow-up, it seemed like peeing while on the phone was a rare situation, and that as he says, sometimes he’ll just go ahead and make the noise and then lie about its source.

7
. I averaged these and ended up giving him a 63% for the purposes of coming up with the group average.

8
. Two things: 1) After further investigation, I gave him a 35% for the purposes of this survey, and 2) Ladies… this one sounds like a keeper!

9
. Who is married, to a woman.

10
. I gave him a 7% because I’ve been a houseguest of his and witnessed the impressive selection of reading materials kept on the back of his toilet.

11
. He is included in the Literary/Artistic category because he mentioned reading glasses, twice.

12
. And he’s here because he’s just so goddam ZEN about it.

Y
OU KNOW THAT PART
in
Some Like It Hot
when Jerry (Jack Lemmon) and Joe (Tony Curtis) are disguised as women at a resort in Florida and they spot the gangsters who had been trying to kill them after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre? Jerry panics and says, “I tell ya, Joe, they’re on to us, and they’re gonna line us up against the wall and eh-eh-eh-eh [
sfx: machine gun fire
]! And then the cops are gonna find two dead dames, and they’re going to take us to the ladies’ morgue. And when they undress us, I tell you, Joe, I’m gonna die of shame.”

I have a fairly persistent similar fear: that I will be involved in a tragic motorcycle vs. automobile accident (I’m on the motorcycle), and I will end up smeared across the pavement somewhere someday, and the paramedics will roll up, find me mangled and unconscious,
unable to speak or advocate for myself and my physical situation. I’ll be bleeding from essentially everywhere, my ulnas sticking out of the skin on both my wrists, but the medics will end up stabilizing me enough to scoop me up and load me into an ambulance and rush me to the nearest trauma center, where en route, the one sitting in the back with me will finally have a minute to go through my wallet, to retrieve my name and other details, and determine whether there’s anything about allergies or next of kin or in-case-of-emergency do this or that in my personal effects. He will find my license, photos of my family, my health insurance card, a condom (kidding!), and nothing will appear out of the ordinary—just an unfortunate guy in his late thirties who will be lucky to live, much less walk or talk again, depending on how the next twenty-four hours of his life go.

When we arrive at the ER, I’ll be transferred from stretcher to bed, and the instant I bounce onto plastic, the hospital trauma team will begin fluttering around me, each contributing a singular yet vital facet of the process of working me up and hopefully saving my life. A crude incision will be made, a chest tube stuck in and threaded between ribs, another tube jammed down my trachea, CBC, electrolytes, EKG. A nurse will then begin swiftly but deftly cutting my jeans up one leg and down the other, and she will rip them off of me, and they will be bloody and torn at both knees and they will drop heavily to the floor. And then she will proceed to cut my boxers (or maybe boxer briefs that day) in a similar manner, perhaps slightly more gingerly with the scissors now, and tear them off too.… And then just like at Jerry’s imaginary morgue in
Some Like It Hot
(except the opposite), my heroic trauma team of experts will momentarily suspend their intricate ballet, because the nurse will look up,
nod back down, and at once everybody will NOT see exactly what they THOUGHT they would see on the helpless bloody guy now lying naked in front of them.

And then, if I’m not already dead from my injuries, I will die of shame.

Nobody who knows me will at this critical juncture be there to speak for me. Nobody will be able to replace or supplement whatever thought each of those medical workers has in his or her head in the moment after my boxers come off, about what might or might not be relevant to my health and survival, about what kind of person I am, about the fact that I have the most lovely and beautiful wife and children waiting for me at home—that I have everything to live for despite the fact that my body doesn’t necessarily sit squarely with what everybody in the room might’ve learned in medical or nursing school. And that latter fact will eclipse just about everything else.

Because—and there is no more essential truth than this—the foremost thing on people’s minds when confronted with a transgender man is his
dick.

Peen.

Schlong.

Tool.

Peter.

Pecker.

Member.

Dipstick.

Dong.

Man muscle.

Skin flute.

Chub.

One-eyed snake.

Mr. Happy.

Mr. Winky.

Tube steak.

Beef bayonet.

Baby arm.

Baldheaded yogurt slinger.

Purple-headed soldier.

Ol’ one eye.

Baloney pony.

Meat puppet.

Hot beef injection.

Donut puncher.

Pork sword.

Heat-seeking moisture missile.

Main vein.

Jack-in-the-box.

Stinky pickle.

Wedding tackle.

Tyrone Jr.

The reality is, transmen have a wide variety of situations going on “down there.” It is infinitely easier to put a fully functional vagina where a penis was, as opposed to the reverse surgery, but a relatively small (and growing) number of transmen do opt to have full phalloplasties, forged out of flesh and skin harvested from their own arms, legs, other sites. A slightly larger number of transmen
opt for other various types of lower surgeries that work with what they’ve already got going on down there. Some just want a urethral-lengthening procedure that allows them to stand to pee. But in my experience, the largest segment of transmen opt for no lower surgery at all (as America learned when Oprah had the “Pregnant Man” on her talk show, testosterone makes many FTM’s clitorises grow quite large over time—essentially a size comparable to the smaller end of the male-born-male penis spectrum); they are happy with just top surgery, or none at all. Like everybody else, transpeople do their lives the way that makes them feel most comfortable. And that is all I’m going to say about the topic, having confirmed or denied NOTHING about Tyrone Jr.