In Full View of Everyone

Peeing In Front of Strangers and Getting Tested

There was a sign taped to the wall of the sexual health clinic I used go to that read: “Do not ‘Pee’ before seeing the doctor.” Before I had a doctor who I saw regularly, I used to get tested at a free clinic tucked away in a municipal building out the east end of Toronto, and by far, my biggest anxiety when it came to getting tested was peeing.

A typical sexual health test consists of a throat swab, optional blood work (if you want to check for syphilis and HIV, which you should), and a urine sample. I get tested every three to six months, and I am generally not especially anxious about whether I have gonorrhea because I figure I probably don’t and if I do, I do. It’s the peeing though, where I start to panic.

It’s not that I have problems peeing. I actually pee quite a lot. Too much really, since I live off of coffee. My peeing anxiety has nothing to with performance, it’s all about timing.

The clinic operated on a first-come-first-serve system, where you took a number and waited around to be called, like the deli. It had two intake times, and since it could only accommodate so many people, you needed to arrive at least a half hour early if you wanted to be seen by a doctor.

After you got a number, it was another half hour before you were called up to fill out some forms, and then it was another half an hour (or more, depending on your number) before you see the doctor. So, we’re talking an hour and a half wait, minimum.

I never minded the wait, except (and now we return to peeing) that waiting created a problem.

Every time I went to get tested, I knew at some point I was going to have to pee, and I also knew that at some point a doctor was going to ask me to pee into a cup. The goal was to have those two points line up. However, we live in an unpredictable world that is full of chance and chaos, so easier said than done.

And then, to make things worse, what do I do if I arrive already having to pee? It’s going to be ages before I see the doctor, so do I pee once and then try to chug back a cup of coffee in the hopes that I’ll have to pee again? What happens if the coffee is too hot or my body can’t process the liquid fast enough and then I can’t pee again when called upon? I suppose I could just hold it, sit there, my discomfort steadily growing, and wait until it’s my turn. But let’s say there were a lot of people ahead of me. Would I be able to hold it for that long? What happens if I think I can hold it and I try, but the agony of waiting gets to be too much and I break, only to find when I come back from the bathroom, they’re calling my name and demanding me to pee again?

I am not exaggerating when I say I have spent hundreds of hours considering the logistics of optimal peeing time.

I brought this up with the doctor once while I was getting tested, and she laughed at me.

“If you have to go that badly while you’re waiting,” she said, “just ask at the counter and they can give you a sample cup.”

As if it were that simple.

Sure, I could just walk up to the the sign-in counter and explain that I am about to piss myself and maybe they’ll give me the little sample cup early. But then what? Am I supposed to sit in the waiting room holding a warm plastic jar of urine? Even if they gave me a bag — for discretion — the waiting room is not nearly big enough to do this without everyone knowing exactly what’s going on.

It’s awkward enough that the candy bowl of free condoms and ketchup-sized packets of lube is right there on the counter by the door, out in the open. Meaning, there is absolutely no way to take a condom discreetly, which is something a shy fella like myself maybe sorta wouldn’t mind.

Some people (people I envy but have literally no way of rationally understanding) are able to utterly shuck any need for discretion. I once watched a woman upend the entire candy bowl of condoms, what must have easily been two hundred condoms, into her purse. They were spilling out all over the floor, but she, like the queen she was, just sauntered out, leaving a trail and looking as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Personally, I think of free condoms much the same as I think of potato chips, if they’re there I’m not taking just one, but to be so bold in full view of everyone…  I mean, can you imagine?

I don’t enjoy all eyes on me as I shove fistfuls of rubbers and lube into my pockets, but at least with them you can grab them on the way out and be gone. But disappear into the bathroom and then return and sit awkwardly holding a jar of my own piss like it’s a bad mixed drink, that would be too much.

Instead, every time I’ve waited, squirming around, feeling my bladder stretching out, and then when my name was finally called, I walked calmly towards the doctor, fully aware that any wrong move and I’d piss myself in the middle of a crowded waiting room.

Later, after I’d finished getting checked, as I was about to leave the clinic — spent, and finally able to relax — I’d look back at all the nervous faces still waiting. I’d smile at them serenely, thinking how great it was that they were there. I’d want to hug them all and say thank you, thank you, thank you for doing the uncomfortable thing and taking charge of your sexual health! And then I’d want to politely ask them all to quit staring at me so that I could tip the entire bowl of condoms and packets of lube into the gaping mouth of my backpack and saunter away, unwatched.

A version of this article appeared in print in The Ontarion issue 188.2 on February 13, 2020.

Please visit www.theontarion.com/submit to find out how you can share your work with The Ontarion.