Pissing into the Wind

For anyone other than cis men, public peeing is a complicated affair

Words: Zoe Woods / Image: Two Seated Women, Constantin Guys

Bushy bushy time!

The announcement bounces down the bus, mixing with the dust swirling in through the open window. You pull your gaze off the horizon and into the vehicle. You’ve been watching the landscape change, miraculously, for weeks. From flat grasslands and leaping Oryx to sharp rocky granite, slowly giving way to endless, rolling sand.

Is it really a bushy bushy? A voice from further back in the bus.

Fair question, you think. You’ve become rather a connoisseur of this Southern African landscape, in your hours, days, weeks, driving across its face. You’ve seen bushy bushy, rocky rocky, sandy sandy. On very good days you’ve seen a toilet. This one looks a lot like a grassy sandy, if you had to guess. The road stretches ahead of your bus and recedes in to the horizon. The tall acacia trees have long left the landscape, leaving behind a sandy, scrubby expanse. Very little to hide behind for someone intent on doing their business.

You’re grateful for the announcement. It’s 42 degrees in the bus—Celsius—and you’re trying to drink enough water to avoid the heatstroke plaguing the couple in front of you. Last night they emptied out their sunscreen to fashion themselves a “mister.” It appears to do little—other than spritz you at inopportune times with lukewarm water. They spritz. You flinch.

Your guide is chortling. Bobbing his head, perhaps in agreement with the voice from the back of the bus. Now, ladies and gentlemen, he says in his soft Zimbabwean accent, Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is our last stop before we make for Ghanzi. We won’t stop again for a while. I’d advise you to all get off.

But there’s no bushes! protests the same voice, from the back.

Yes, replies the guide. Ladies in the back, gentlemen in the front, no peeking!

“FOR THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO IDENTIFY AS WOMEN, FINDING A SAFE (FORGET PRIVATE) PLACE TO PEE REQUIRES CAREFUL THOUGHT AND PLANNING.”

So we file off.

There’s a choice ahead of you now. You can pick your way into the scrub—not for cover, the ankle high grass and sand offers little of that—but perhaps for the illusion of private space and reduced splashback. That means risking thorns, and who knows what else you don’t see until you step on it.

Your other choice is the asphalt road. Softer, when it comes to your shoes, but baking. Splashback guaranteed. The cover of the bus sways you. You pick the asphalt.

These calculations are well-worn grooves in the recesses of your mind. For those who choose to identify as women, finding a safe (forget private) place to pee requires careful thought and planning. Vigilance. Can I afford to take the shorter route through the Rockies, if I have to stop at that gas station after dark? Can I afford to see this city, without a man? What is the cost? For some women, it is their lives. In developing nations like India, access to a washroom at home has been identified as a key contributor in reducing violence against women. For others, it is their freedom of movement. Grand adventures made less grand through lack of access to a safe WC.    

Photo by mikekwok/iStock / Getty Images

As a group, you poke your heads around the side of the bus—avoiding peeking at the front—in the hopes that you can time your circle with a lull in the traffic. The coast looks clear. Someone gives the go ahead.

Of course, this requires coordination now. There are eight of you, out here to relieve yourselves, and if you don’t figure out some sort of formation, one poor individual will end up downstream. Asphalt has very low absorption, remember? So you form a circle, pulling down shorts and squatting in a neat little ring, passing the toilet paper to the left until everyone has a square. It’s a pee party! someone declares. A car horn honks in agreement. Shoot, guess you didn’t time it as well as you thought you did.

You hurry to finish, but you’ve been trying to drink enough water to combat the heat. Next to you, your tent-mate makes a joke, in a lilting Swiss accent “Don’t know why we’re driving all the way to Vic Falls, we’ve seen it here.” She’s a nurse, nothing about this women’s (pee) circle seems to faze her.

You widen your stance in the hopes of saving your shoes. A thousand miles and a world away you recall a very different kind of nakedness in nature. Floating, alone, at night, in a Japanese hot spring. The whisper of wind through impossibly tall redwoods, the acrid smell of sulfur. Utter silence. So much more exposed, and yet...what’s the word? Secure? What is the opposite of vulnerable?

Another honk brings you back. The smell of gasoline, mixed with dung, grounding you in this time and place. Pull up your shorts.

You file, single file, back onto the bus.

Hopefully, next stop is a bushy bushy.