Bathroom of doom

When I was about 6 years old, after I had announced to my mother that I wanted to be a boy, she had one of her feminist friends come to our house and try to talk me out of it. One of the things she said was, "Do you just want to be a boy so you can stand up to pee?" At the time I thought this was incredibly dense of her. But now I sometimes find myself wishing more than anything that I could just whip it out and take a whiz.

So, the other night I went to a new club for the first time. After a few pints of Stella, I encountered one of my worst bathroom nightmares: the men's room with no stall and no lock on the door.

Let me give you some background on this. Besides having my own personal privacy neuroses, like most transgendered people, I have some longstanding issues with bathrooms.

When I was a girl who looked like a boy, I would consistently get double-takes in the women's room, and the occasional (sometimes naive, sometimes snotty) "You're in the wrong restroom." Unlike some genderqueers I know, I was too well-mannered to flash my boobs as proof of "valid entry." I always got the feeling that my presence was alarming or disconcerting to the general population of ladies' rooms. And I wasn't too happy to be in there either, because a) being there meant acknowledging that I was a female, and b) I didn't like being stared at and feeling like a freak.

On top of that, I've always had a dread of public restrooms because I'm pee-shy. I just have trouble doing my business with other people around. So my ideal situation has always been the unisex, one-person, "go in and lock the door behind you" kind of bathroom.

When I first began transitioning and using men's bathrooms, I was scared to death. The first time I used a public men's room was in my gender therapist's building. I kept hoping no one would come in and I was so nervous I dropped a pen in the toilet. I was really self-conscious about having to sit to pee, and I was afraid someone would look at me and realize that I wasn't a "real" guy. But I was already passing well enough, and soon I figured out that these were both non-issues. The real issue was how disgusting most men's restrooms are, especially the stalls.

I still use the stalls when I have to take a piss, but I prefer to stand up, because of the aforementioned sanitary reasons, because it feels more "natural," and because it's part of passing as male (for me, anyway). I use a homemade STP (stand-to-pee device) made out of rubber tubing and an irrigation fitting and a flexible rubber funnel. I carry it in my pocket and wash it out after I use it. Yes, I know this is kind of gross, but whatever. It's how I deal.

I'm really curious about how other FTMs who stand to pee deal with this. A lot of guys on the forums talk about using modified medicine spoons or some variation, like the Mango or the Pissin' Packer. Personally, I've never been able to get the medicine spoon to work for me with any great success; I just end up spraying pee all over the place. I tried the Mango, which has a specially designed funnel. It worked a little better for me, but the tubing was way too short, and I can only use it reliably if I drop my pants to my knees, and it usually still leaks a little.

In theory, if you're using one of these things, you're supposed to be able to walk up to a urinal, whip out your packer (which you hope no one will be looking at too closely, because its fleshtone is completely unnatural), and piss through the tubing. I don't know how people do this, because it takes me a lot of futzing around to get everything lined up down there, and if I was doing this at a urinal it would look like I was playing with myself. Even after that, if you're wearing normal pants, the fly is going to be slightly above your crotch, so the tubing is going uphill. So that means you have to pull your pants down at least some to get the right angle. And you have to have one hand stuck down your pants the whole time to keep things in place. Meanwhile, you're still taking the risk of pissing down your leg in full view of other people. So basically I think the guys who say they use these things at urinals all the time with no problems are stretching the truth or incredibly lucky.

Back to the club, and the scary bathroom situation. So, I walk into the john and I'm confronted with a urinal, a freestanding toilet with no stall, and a round hole in the door where the doorknob should be. I'm guessing they had to take the lock off because guys were doing drugs and/or having sex in there (given this particular bar, probably both - at the same time). With some of the characters there that night, this was not a situation where I wanted to get caught with my pants and underwear pulled down to my knees and my ass bared, pissing through a funnel, which is what I usually do in the privacy of a stall. I didn't even want to get caught pissing through a few inches of rubber tubing hanging out of my pants, but there was no alternative. I'm still not comfortable at urinals, and there weren't any visual barriers on the sides, so I sort of hunched over the toilet with my back to the door and did my thing as quickly as possible, hoping no one would walk in. They didn't. I made it out with my bladder emptied and my dignity intact. Whew. No more beer for me that night.

This was one of those rare situations where I actually wish I could get my ladies' room privileges back. But there are some doors you can't reenter once you've exited.