Things You Didn’t Want to Think About Today: Trough-Pissing Strategies for Today’s Urban Male

You’re going to suffer if you don’t think things through in advance, and trough-pissing is no exception.

Let me take a wild guess; you were going to get up from your barstool, walk into that bathroom, face that long steel trough-style urinal, and just open up right over the drain. Am I right? Yeah, I know that’s what a short-term-thinking lemming such as yourself was going to do, because you like to go through life without pausing to ask yourself the important questions along the way. Well, let me force you to reflect on the situation in which you were about to put yourself.

You were trained at an early age to piss right into the center of the pot, and that usually works. So when it comes to a trough, you think, “Awesome! I got the spot right above the drain!” You’re thinking that’s a good thing, because you believe that the best course of action is to get rid of your waste straightaway.

Except you haven’t thought it through. Sure, your decision here is all well and good if you live in a world where no one else exists, but then you probably wouldn’t end up pissing into a trough in the first place. Sad fact is we have to share this rock–all however-many-billions of us–and some of those billions are going to come into that restroom with you. And there you’ll be, pissing foolishly away directly over the drain, no doubt with some stupid day-dreamy smile on your face, and they’ll have no choice but to take an upstream position. Now you’ll start to make a funny face, because the stench of someone else’s urine (probably some rank copper-color that really punches its way on up your nostrils) will commingle with your own (you probably drink lots of water and pride yourself on the clarity of your stream, and it will pain you, seeing it polluted with urobilins from someone else’s kidneys), and you’ll find yourself thinking, “Aw, man, this is disgusting, why is that other guy pissing into my piss?”

Well, this is how a trough urinal works. This is the way it’s been designed. Don’t come crying to me if you wander like a child into the path of another man’s urine.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the next time you go to a trough for a little micturition, get as far away from the drain as you can. Yes, it will seem silly to stand all the way over to the side and watch your piss roll down the long length of the trough. But I assure you, it will be worth it when that second man comes in and has to take his position–knowingly, grudgingly, sadly–closer to the drain.

I can’t explain it any better than I have, but there’s a reason I conduct interviews in bars with trough urinals. Nothing beats telling some downstream motherfucker that he’s not going to get the job at the firm while he wrinkles his nose, the stench of my urine in his nostrils as his eyes watch his hopes for his future swirl down the drain.

I just wish I could make all failure so olfactory.