Urinating my way across the United States

a trans person peed here

It’s Pride Month, and all of my posts this month are going to be about trans joy, which is something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in the world. Bear in mind, some moments of trans joy show up in unlikely places, and some start out as anything but joyous occasions. In each case, this is a month of happy endings. However you celebrate Pride—whether you’re a seasoned parade-goer, a new ally looking for ways to high-five your friends, or a parent thinking about how to celebrate Pride with your kids—I wish you all the love, glitter, and disco music your heart desires.

I grew up on road trips, which I have often said is the one thing my parents got really right. We trekked all over the continental US to more national parks than I can count. Those memories for me are vivid, and the experiences cultivated a deep love of trees and mountains in me.

So when a friend asked me to drive across the country with him a few months back, it was easy to say yes. We weren’t headed to parks or off-beat historical sites, but we would still share the drive for seven days, across 4000 miles of highways, through 12 states. It is exactly the kind of thing that I daydream about, even if you’re thinking my butt flattened from so many days sitting in a minivan (it did). It just meant facing one fear.

Peeing in public restrooms.

Before we venture together into the world of transgender people in bathrooms, I think it’s only fair to give you some background. First, I come from a long line of overactive bladders, and second, carrying two kids in utero on top of my own bladder ruined what was left of its integrity (and my dignity).

A story interlude, you ask? Why yes! Let’s do that!

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On one of my family’s famous road trips (I’m guessing I was probably 9 or 10 years old), my dad pored over the folded AAA roadmap stretched across the hood of the car somewhere in West Virginia. The origin and destination are not important. It is, however, vital to understand that my father was, and still is, the kind of man who firmly believes that his reputation as a “good father” rests on his ability to determine the most efficient overland route. This route may come at the expense of impatient children in the back seat. It may mean the death of the car’s air conditioning. It also runs the risk of closed roads, inevitable construction in the summer months, and sometimes—oftentimes—regret.

Here’s the other thing that road tripping in the 80s gave us that you modern kids won’t understand: zero topography calculations. This’ll make sense in a minute.

So he picks this route on the map and says it’s the hypotenuse. It’ll be faster and shorter than going on both of the legs of the triangle, and as quick as that it was decided and done. In the background, please note the slurping sound of my mother giving her husband 10% of her attention whilst she happily drains a 128-ounce cup of soda from lunch.

Hey Robin, was it really 128 ounces? Did they even sell those back in the 80s?

If the fish in your story can get bigger, so can the soda in mine.

In the car, happily on our merry way, my brother and I entertained ourselves with rocks or dinosaur bones or whatever we had on hand in the back seat (this is how my children interpret what it meant to grow up “in the 80s”). The road went over a dip. It went up a tiny mountain and back down the other side. We swung left, we swung right. We drove through woods, we drove through fields, and Dad made a crack about how the cows in this part of the country have two legs shorter than the other. Two lanes, one in each direction, bumpy from freezing and thawing and rain and big trucks, with occasional loose gravel in patched areas, the road tossed our little Honda Civic hatchback all over the place.

By the end of the first hour, we all heard Mom drink the last of that soda. She popped open the lid and proceeded to chew the few little pieces of ice at the bottom. “Where’s the next rest area?” she asked.

Dad shrugged. “We should be off this in a few minutes.”

We swung left, we swung right. We went uphill, we went downhill. We swooped around a corner, and then we did it all again. And the road got rougher.

Check out that super squiggly line of US Highway 250.

Another hour later it was obvious to everyone in that compact vehicle that Mom was hitting a critical threshold of bladder capacity. And if anything, the road was getting worse with every mile we covered. We were deep in the Virginia/West Virginia forests and fields, and not a single town was anywhere to be found. There were no side roads. There was no shoulder to pull off onto. Dad hit a pothole and we all thought Mom would explode. She started to cry, and my brother made a crack about how that was one way to get the moisture out, and if her body had not been utterly overcome with the pain and pressure of all that fluid she might have killed him with the flick of her left arm between the seats.

Now I’m not gonna regale you with what I recall of the heated “conversation” between the adults in the front row, but let’s just say the pressure for my father to get us to a town with a bathroom was increasing by the millisecond.

Lo and behold, buildings in the distance appeared, shadowy and indistinct now that we had been on US Highway 250 for what must have been close to four hours. You see, the map showed a barely squiggling line from northwest to southeast, but it could not possibly provide the additional mileage consumed by all of the hills and valleys and constant elevation details of a road that cut through those low mountains. “I don’t care what it is, it will have a toilet, and that toilet is MINE,” my mother said through gritted teeth.

I also thought a bathroom break would be nice.

Dad pulled the car to a screeching halt at the only curb in that tiny town (and by tiny, I honestly mean there was one intersection, four buildings, and three of them were closed for the night). Mom lurched out of the car as fast as her cramping internal organs would permit, and I followed close behind. We walked into…

the very first bar I had ever gone into in my life.

It was dimly lit inside. Hank Williams played on a jukebox that had one functioning light and was smashed in on one corner. There was a lop-sided pool table in the center of the room with the most pathetic string of half-lit Christmas lights strung over the (non-functional) light fixture above. All in all, the six people inside that bar collectively turned and gawked at the mother and her little girl walking through the front door with a clear air of desperation in every move. My imagination wants to believe that there was a record-scratching silence upon our entry, but I’m sure that didn’t actually happen.

Indecipherable conversations or hand signals later, I was whisked away into a dark corner behind my mother’s rapid footsteps. We pushed through a dark door into a dark bathroom, and my mom flipped on the light switch.

My entire world was bathed in purple.

Purple walls.

Purple toilet.

Purple toilet seat.

Purple exposed plumbing.

Purple sink.

Purple light fixture.

Purple light BULB.

Purple light switch and light switch plate.

Purple floor.

The only thing NOT purple was the small mirror over the sink where I made faces at myself for the six solid minutes it took my mother to release the 128-ounce diuretic that also pulled another 462 ounces of body fluids out with it. I don’t remember peeing in that bathroom myself. I don’t remember the walk out of the bar.

But I do remember my mom getting to the side of the car where my dad stood over the hood with the map spread out again. She didn’t say a word. She grabbed the map, folded it perfectly along all of its tidy lines, jammed it into her purse, and snatched the keys out of Dad’s hand.

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I’m not going to bore you with stories about my own bladder’s trauma, but many of you here do know my sordid history with public restrooms as a transman.

I waited until after top surgery to venture into the men’s room for the first time. I worried before then that having the chest I had would surely get me into trouble in a public bathroom. I was not a small size and I couldn’t bind. And so I waited. In my third week post-op, finally free of the Velcro binder I had worn to reduce inflammation across the stitches in my newly flattened chest, I stood outside an outdoor restroom at a nearby beach. It was quiet enough that I could listen for the sounds of movement inside. When I was mostly convinced that I would be alone, I darted in, swung into the only stall, closed the door, and hid.

Rationally, I know that most folks in public restrooms are so busy worrying about themselves that they hardly notice anyone else. And I’d been given solid advice within the transmasc community that men’s rooms have rules, and the biggest is NOT to make eye contact with anyone.¹ I knew that it was very unlikely that anyone would call me out for having a hairless face or for being short. I knew that the other men in those restrooms wouldn’t care whether other guys were using the urinals or the stalls to conduct their business.

None of that matters in a panic attack.

And the panic attacks stuck with me for an entire year.

I vividly recall needing the restroom at the Tillamook Creamery visitor center during a summer vacation that first year and getting stuck in the stall with a panic attack so bad I almost didn’t make it back out. I would go in with all the confidence in the world, and then all I could imagine was opening the stall door and having someone see me and say something, and I FROZE at the fear of it. It was paralyzing. Sometimes I’d get trapped in the bathroom and have to text a friend or my wife to tell them how scared I was that I would never make it back to the outside world.

It was unreasonable.

It was utterly ridiculous.

And it was 100% real for me every time I used a public restroom.

But with a bladder like mine (needy as all get-out), I ended up in public restrooms all the dang time. I hoped that the constant exposure to that fear would eventually make the intensity fade. I hoped I would adapt. I hoped that enough neutral experiences would begin to overshadow the scariness. And for a long time that did not happen, and a new worry began to develop—that I would never get over that fear. Would I forever be the transguy who dreads using a public toilet?

A few months later, during a camping trip with my wife and kids, I walked from our tent site to the central bathroom in the tall trees. The men’s side was closed off for cleaning, and we were leaving in the next few minutes. I’d had more than my allotted amount of tea with breakfast. It was adding up. I looked left and right, checked all my surroundings, and then dashed into the women’s room.

It felt so bizarre.

I had spent more than forty years using women’s rooms around the globe, and suddenly I knew I didn’t belong in there. Perversely, now I was REALLY worried about someone catching me on the way out, especially since I was sporting a scruffy adorable beard, a flat chest, and alarmingly hairy legs.

Over 12 states and 4000 miles of roads and highways through the United States, my friend and I stopped at more rest areas and truck stops than I could possible recount. We would park and walk inside to the facilities casually.

I never rushed.

I never felt threatened.

I was not scared.

I sometimes took pictures of the graffiti on the walls to joke about later.

I washed my hands in peace.

And when I looked in the mirror in those restrooms, the guy staring back looked like a confident version of someone I will continue to grow into with each public bathroom adventure.

I still drink too much tea before I leave the house, and I almost always have to pee as soon as we go anywhere. But I spend a lot less time worrying about what will happen. I’m much more focused on whether there is toilet paper in that stall (which happened plenty in ladies’ rooms too). The panic comes less frequently but may never entirely disappear. I see trans bathroom bans in red states and feel concerned about what might happen to me there, but I remember the truck stops in some of those places, and I remember how people there smiled and were kind. Maybe I was just lucky. Maybe I “pass” more than I realize.

Or maybe the world is just full of kindness (and even neutrality) in more places than we think. Maybe even in purple bathrooms in the Virginia hills.

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Listen, just because my bathroom journey turned out on a positive note does not mean that it works that way for all transfolx. Please be kind when you know you are sharing a restroom with a trans person. Stand with us when we are bullied, and listen to our stories about the hard things. It is such a relief to have someone caring hear us.

Your trans friend,

Robin

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1. Ironically, the intention behind this is to prevent someone from accusing you of being gay. And if you don’t see the inherent irony in transgender men indoctrinating one another into homophobic toxic masculinity, just wait til I start talking about being a pregnant man.