Dave Barry

Complete Guide to Guys

The Public-Rest Room Problem

This is a problem that guys face when they go into a public rest room. When women go into a rest room, they have the privacy of stall, but guys have to do it while standing pretty much out in the open, sometimes with many other guys standing around.

This can be tricky, because peeing is very much associated, in guys' minds, with masculinity. . .

My point is that peeing has significance for guys that goes way beyond the mere elimination of bodily fluids. It is an important territorial statement. This is why, every time a guy enters a public rest room, he must confront a critical guy problem; namely: Which urinal should he use? His goal is to avoid, at all costs, peeing right next to another guy, because they would be infringing on each other's territories.

So in the ideal guy rest room, the urinals would be located a minimum of fifty feet apart. Unfortunately, in the real world, they're right next to each other, which means the guy often must make split-second strategic urinal decisions. To illustrate this process, let's imagine a public rest room in an airport. Let's assume the rest room has a row of five urinals, which are represented as rectangles in the following scientific diagram:

		-------------------------------
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
		-------------------------------

Let's further assume that nobody is in the room when Guy A walks in. He is almost always going to choose on of the end urinals-- either no. 1 or no. 5--because he knows this will put him as far as possible from the next guy who comes along. Let's say Guy A chooses urinal no. 5, which means out situation is now this:

		-------------------------------
		|     |     |     |     | Guy |
		|     |     |     |     |  A  |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
		-------------------------------

When Guy B walks in, he will ALWAYS take no.1. He would never, ever, in a billion years, take no. 4. To do such a thing would cause Guy A to become alarmed to the point where he might zip up his fly so fast that he risks wetting his pants and possibly even injuring his manhood, rather then remain there. But Guy B will always take the far urinal; he may be a decent, secure, open- minded, nonjudgmental person with absolutely no prejudice whatsoever toward gay people, but he nevertheless would rather poke both of his eyeballs out than have Guy A think that he IS one. So he will go to the other end. If the line of urinals were a mile long, Guy B might very well choose to hike the entire distance, even if this meant he would miss his plane.

So now the situation is this:

		-------------------------------
		| Guy |     |     |     | Guy |
		|  B  |     |     |     |  A  |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
		-------------------------------

When Guy C comes in, he will clearly choose urinal no.3. He is not crazy about it, but he still has a one-urinal buffer on each side:

		-------------------------------
		| Guy |     | Guy |     | Guy |
		|  B  |     |  C  |     |  A  |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
		-------------------------------

But now in comes Guy D, and HE has a real guy problem, because whatever urinal he picks, he'll be right next to two other guys. This is very upsetting. Some guys in this situation will choose to pee in an enclosed stall, or wait until there's a buffered urinal available, or go way off to the side and pee against the wall, as follows:

		-------------------------------
		| Guy |     | Guy |     | Guy |            Guy
		|  B  |     |  C  |     |  A  |             D
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|     |     |     |     |     |
		|  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
		-------------------------------

If Guy D DOES go to the one of the available urinals--say no.2.-- he and guys B and C will all stand rigid, staring intently straight ahead, as though the wall tiles were inscribed with a secret formula for turning Grape Nuts into platinum. "DEATH BEFORE EYE CONTACT", this is the motto of a guy at a public urinal.

I realize that you women out there think I'm making all this up. But ask the guy in your life to read this section, and I bet he'll nod in recognition. He's been there, and he knows the behavior I'm describing. But he has never felt comfortable about discussing this subject with you, because this is an extremely sensitive area for him. Also he knows it's stupid.

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