A slight upgrade from the trough.
(OR, WHY ARE URINALS DESIGNED TO SPRAY PISS ALL OVER MEN? [or, How to Properly Piss in a Urinal])
Today, we will examine and contemplate modern urinal design. Perhaps not the first topic to come to mind as something you’d like to explore in depth, but, as I hope this article will show you, it is one worthy of investigation. This topic admittedly caters largely to men, although the occasional woman may find some amusement or insight in the discussion. Without further ado, I give you a diatribe on the virtues, or lack thereof, of modern urinal design.
BACKDROP
I should first go about explaining the situation for the handful of women readers who will successfully read this entire piece. I don’t know what a woman’s experience urinating into a toilet entails. Even if I were to urinate while sitting on one, I could not recreate this experience, as I do not have a vagina. Hell, I don’t even have a mangina. Just a penis. A perfectly sculpted, well-groomed, sizable and handsome penis. But enough about that. This piece is about things to piss into, not things to piss out of.
Using my rudimentary knowledge of physics, I deduce that when a woman pisses into a toilet, there is some amount of splashing. Gauging from first-hand knowledge of wiping procedures, I gather that some urine never quite manages to even exit the vaginal area. While these scientific inevitabilities present some difficulty, women have the benefit of having nothing but their bare ass and some amount of bare thigh/leg exposure susceptible to any splashback or lingering urine, not to mention the readily available paper with which to wipe away their troubles.
For men, the scenario is not so pleasant. First, our urination stations are often designed in a manner not unlike that of a hog or cattle feeding area. Men are regularly expected to nonchalantly mosey up to a trough beside their fellow primates, remove their piss producer from their clothing for all to see, and urinate in extremely close proximity to one another, often as wide-eyed and confused as a cattle with a prod up its arse. Best case scenario, we are given an 18” long by 24” high slab of wood with which to shield our innocent eyes from the shame and discomfort of unwanted man meat exposure.
Unlike our female primate counterparts, who are given a plentiful bowl of water in which to pee, we are expected to piss into the back or bowl of a dry porcelain or possibly metal receptacle. This receptacle has no lip, no guard of any sort facing the user. Walls are only present on the sides to reduce cleanup for service workers. Earlier, I mentioned that physics leads to the likelihood of splashing when urinating into a toilet full of impeccably clean water (http://www.wtsp.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=25442). For women, the presence of this water, at the very least, gives the illusion that whatever is splashing up on one’s ass is, at best, clean water, or, at worst, diluted piss water. And again, I don’t even know that this splashing reaches a woman’s body; I’ve never asked (please, let us know in the comments).
This brings us back to those water-free urinals men are savagely forced to use. You had better believe that splashing is still an issue. But there is no illusion here; no comforting water to cast doubt on the pisser. Oh no, we are left with the irrevocable knowledge that the liquid shooting back onto our pants, genitalia, shoes, bare legs and/or feet (should one be unfortunate enough to be wearing shorts or flip-flops) is, in fact, our own urine. Golden showers – mandatory. Is it so surprising that an entire industry has evolved around men fetishizing over peeing on others or being peed on themselves? We’ve only been peeing on ourselves multiple times a day OUR ENTIRE LIVES.
MODERN URINAL DESIGN
This brings us to the topic at hand. WHY THE FUCK HASN’T ANYONE IMPROVED UPON THIS PISSTASTIC DESIGN? Given that the vast majority of engineering students are male (nearly 80% [source: every study ever done on the subject available anywhere on the planet]), one would think that some bastard would have resolved this issue by now. I mean, when we live in an age where someone can make a gigantic leap in condiment design BY TURNING THE FUCKING BOTTLE UPSIDE DOWN, why hasn’t anyone tackled the public piss problem that is modern urinal design??
Part of the problem is that there is an assumption that men cannot control where they piss. Nothing could be further from the truth. Men piss with precision. I’ve seen enough women’s restrooms to know that it is the fairer sex who cannot aim. Whether this is because they refuse to build a nest and prefer to hover, spraying piss every which way, or just feel it isn’t something worth their time, is unknown to me. But we men can hit a target from a significant distance, such is the force and direction of the piss stream, which should, of course, not be crossed. So, how about a urinal with a much smaller opening? Even the urinal present in your typical porta-potty improves on most modern urinal design by taking this approach. Young boys whose aim may not be refined yet would present a problem, but they already have a urinal designated for them – the low-sitting one on the end. This urinal can stick with the current design.
MAKING DO IN A WORLD OF SUBPAR URINALS
In my years as a Male Who Pisses, I have developed some strategies that can help you compensate for the failure of modern urinal design until some praiseworthy engineer steps up to the plate and makes the next great urinal design improvement. What follows are my findings:
1. A River Runs Through It
Some paragraphs ago, I lamented how lucky the female is to have a bowl of clean water in which to piss. The effect the presence of water has on incoming piss cannot be understated. Any man who has gone camping or hiking (or any male who has ever stepped foot outside, really) can attest to the difference observed between pissing on a rock and pissing into a river. The river effect can be recreated with any flush urinal by flushing just before you urinate.
2. The Sidewinder
While modern urinal design presents no worthwhile lip to catch urine splashback from the intended usage position, one can somewhat combat this predicament by skirting the typical approach and pissing into the corner of the urinal wall from a 45 degree angle on either side of the urinal. This practice will cause the piss, which the reader will remember men can deliver with precision aiming, to hit the urinal in such a way that the lip on the side and the back of the urinal actually do their damn job for a change and catch most of the splashing urine that would otherwise shower one’s clothing.
(Note that this method is not ideal when the restroom’s designer has held the belief that you are barbaric neanderthals who do not need any wall divider between piss receptacles.)
3. The Hail Mary
When one finds oneself alone in a given restroom, one is presented with the rare chance to circumvent the piss problem through sheer distance-to-urinal trajectory. Piss splashback has a very limited radius, and if no one is around to stare at you pissing from four feet behind the urinal, your pants/legs will remain piss-free. Or maybe you just don’t give a fuck and do it in front of others, who am I to judge? I could hardly blame you for preferring strangers see your penis than getting urine on your clothes or person. And as previously mentioned, chances are they’re going to see your penis anyway. This method also has limited success when standing at the perimeter of a wall divider, should one be lucky enough to find oneself in a restroom with such a luxury.
4. There’s No Place Like Home
If you are a male who pisses, you have likely noticed that the issue at hand does not seem to be a problem at home. This is because toilet design trumps urinal design by a long shot. If all else fails, you could piss into a toilet. But We Men must look out for one another and there are multiple variables to consider. Some men will be entering the restroom with the intent to shit, and it is a faux pas to prevent them this courtesy while you piss into one of a few available toilets. Further, this toilet, whether auto flush or not, is unlikely to flush itself for you should you opt to piss in it. Now you have put the burden of getting rid of your waste on your fellow man – not cool, broheim. And while we know your aim is true, just to be safe, please lift the seat for the sake of the next kindred soul. (No need to put the seat down after, we know we’re right on that topic.)
5. The Pussy
One could pretend one has a vagina and sit on a toilet to pee. But who does that, I mean, really?
Well folks, there you have it. Over 1500 words about piss and urinals. I hope this discussion has given you pause to reflect on the things that really matter. I think we can all agree that world peace is pretty fucking far away when we can’t even get a damn urinal designed to keep us from pissing on ourselves. I bid you good day.
-Luke Toney