THE URGH!

The main problem with waking up to pee is that afterwards you don't feel like going back to bed. Because bathrooms are stimulating environments where a man is alone with himself and the vastness of the universe. Is that an ingrown toenail? What if that kid that I hurt way back in second grade is still upset at that? Jos van Zanten, Waalre. I probably should have been more involved in my brother's life.

So you step outside for a smoke before spending an hour plonking on the computer. Dang it's cold. Are those snow weasels? An eagle circles over the arctic wastes of Nob Hill and somewhere a wolf howls. Polar bears. Unicorns.

A few minutes later a garbage truck crosses the frozen tundra.

Probably shouldn't have had so much tea last night.

Shoot, need to pee again.


Realistically I know it's not a solid sheet of ice out there, but the sub-woke mind insists that it's Siberia. Not somewhere between Larkin and Hyde. I think I had way more subcutaneous fat when I was younger, insulation. It's the middle of June, and I shouldn't feel this cold.
I'm sure the Republicans had something to do with this.
Someone should do something!

My dreaming has been much more interesting these past few years, intense and vibrant. It's probably because of the blood pressure pills. And I should, perhaps, cut down a bit on the caffeine. On the one hand coffee and tea make the cold feel less, on the other hand we've got what my apartment mate refers to as the alarm-clock bladder. But hers is more finely tuned than mine.


Sometimes in the middle of the night I can hear her stirring in her chamber, then toddling off to the bathroom. And I clench, because for some reason I want to use it at precisely that time too. Patient, patient. Pretend that there is no pressure there at all. Go outside with a partially filled briar for a quick puff on the front steps. Do NOT think of the bladder, a hollow organ with muscles in the lower part of the torso, nor the urethral opening at its base, or the mucosal flaps, and smooth muscle fibers in spiral and circular bundles. Detrusor. Adventitia.


Your ancestors lived in New York and New Jersey, where it gets much colder outside. They didn't have central heating or a comfortable place to pee. There wasn't even pizza there, for crapsake! Life was hard. They had to clench till dawn then go pee behind the barn with the pigs and cows!

You know, I don't think that inside toilets had even been invented yet when they were seventeenth and eighteenth century Calvinists in what was once called New Netherland. Damn the West Indies Company! No wonder headless horsemen rode all over the place at night. They were looking for a place to pee.




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