Sonja's Sojourns – an Irreverent Look at Internet Dating  

Zero Percent Chance of (Golden) Showers

If there was a twelve-step program for people like myself, I'd be one of the first to get up and the podium and announce: "Hello, my name is Sonja Katz, and I am pee-shy."

Nobody taught me to be this way; I just am. I can't belch or fart on command, either, but those talents don't seem to be as much in vogue as urination, for some reason.

I can't even think about committing a crime because I might have to go to prison. It's not only because I want to be good. You'll never see a murder, robbery or even jaywalking on my record simply because I could not possibly pee in jail.

It's true. The mere thought of being forced to urinate (or worse) on a cold metal toilet in the middle of a cell, with nothing separating the event from cellmates and guards and  others passing by my little "house" is enough to scare me straight for all time.

Peeing in a public restroom is next to impossible, but I manage. However, there are conditions: I can't do anything until I hear someone washing their hands, or flushing their own toilets. I pray that there will have loud music piped in from the restaurant or wherever, or at the very least, that there's a fan. In a worse-case scenario, I'd even accept someone in an adjoining stall making very loud bathroom-related noises just so that someone waiting in that perennial line in every public women's bathroom, wouldn't be able to hear me.

There I sit, hoping nobody else comes in, wondering when they're going to be able to fulfill their axiously-held reservation in this place where, except for a couple of stalls, there is Standing Room Only. Then, and only then, can I finally (and with great relief) go with the flow.

The same goes for the bathroom at someone's house, and please, I pray, don't let them feel like chatting to me from the other side of the door while I'm trying to go. I don't want to talk; I just want them to go away. If they do, I sit there thinking they will eventually come back, so I still can't go. All the while, I'm wishing I could, like everyone else, easily obtain the pause that refreshes.

On the other hand, if someone wants to pee around me, I could care less. Let 'er rip with the door wide open; I don't care! In fact, I even encourage it. I love to see someone able to be so carefree about the whole process.

"If you really love me," I said to a boyfriend on a winter trip to the mountains, "You'd write my name in the snow."

"You know I don't write cursive," he teased. "Besides, I don't know if I'm up for that. You know, if I have it in me."

"Be glad my name isn't Anna Maria Alberghetti," I said. "You can do it, Champ. I know you can." He did, of course, oblidge, just as any self-respecting man with the usually-charged firehose. Put that fire right out, and although his penmanship was less-than-stellar, there stood my name in clear yellow contrast against its snowy-white background for all time – until the weather changed, that is.

I was once in an online chat room with a woman who was luring men by claiming she could pee her name in the sand.

"Such talent!" I thought, as I imagined the contortions a woman would have to go through to perform that particular act. Lucky for her, although her name was Beatrice, everyone just called her "B."

It's difficult to imagine that a golden shower would be something you'd ask for, but I've had a couple of partners who were anxious to rain on my parade.

"What the hell, it's sterile. People even drink their own urine when they're dying of thirst in the middle of some life-threatening situation," I reasoned. Someone peeing on me can't be that bad, as long as they understand it can't be reciprocated.

Still they try: "Oh, c'mon, Sonja. Everyone can pee just a little," insisted one particular shower date.

Tell that to my gynecologist, I said, who made me sit in his crowded waiting room, totally humiliated, drinking those tiny, pleated paper cups of water until I absolutely had no choice but to pee in his damned little beaker. It took just over an hour before I could comply.

"Okay, okay," I finally relented to my pee-filled paramour. "Let's try. How do we do it?"

"Uh, I thought you'd know," he said.

All I could do was shake my head, slightly pissed off. Sometimes, dating becomes so much work, it's just plain sad.

You can write to Sonja at sonjakatz@sexyads.com if you're a sexyads.com member!