At The Movies 19

Men will never know how lucky they are to be able to pee standing up—seriously. There're not many instances in which I would gladly change genders, but the after-movie rush for the bathrooms is one of them. While men seem to constantly be able to file in and out of the bathroom with ease (and there are never lines that spill out and around the corner), we women are forced to stand in a humiliating queue that seems to go on forever. Part of it is obvious: when you can't just open your pants and let fly, it takes longer to do your business—for one thing, there's no way you're just going to sit down on the filthy seat, so you either have to squat precariously or take the time to do a thorough wipe down and then put on one of those disposable seat covers. But another part of it is the absolute lack of consideration that some women have for other people. They'll take hours to use the bathroom, no joke, and then hog both sink and mirror beyond the reasonable amount it takes to do a quick one-over and wash your hands.

This phenomenon is much worse after popular movies.

Sucker Punch was pretty terrible. No story, hollow characters, and half-hour periods where almost nothing happens. Well, that's not entirely true, stuff happens—but it's only fluff, special effects and bad martial arts. I guess I should've known going in that I wouldn't like it, but I wanted to keep an open mind. However, there's not much I could have done: the movie was made for guys. With scantily-clad jailbait running around and performing impossible acts in impossible settings, there's no way I could enjoy it. I don't even like anime, which, if I did, might have saved me.

Needless to say, it being opening night, the theatre was completely packed. Absolutely every seat had someone in it. While the majority were guys, enough of them were able to convince their girlfriends to tag along. Cole, my boyfriend, was no exception. He managed to drag me along with the promise that he'd owe me a favour later—like he didn't owe me a ton already—and I agreed, mostly because it was easier than fighting about it.

Seeing as I hadn't had anything to eat—and we were in a long enough line anyways—I decided to do something I haven't done in forever and buy some popcorn to eat during the movie. Ever since I found out just how much fat is in that stuff—deceptive, isn't it?—I haven't touched it. (I mean, think of how much real junk food you can eat for the same amount of calories!) Alongside the popcorn came a drink—huge and imposing, like those monstrously large dicks that appear in some kinds of genre porn. Little white girl meets giant black destroyer—you know, that kind of thing. As soon as I brought it back with me into the theatre, Cole looked at it, then at me and grinned.

"You're going to end up wetting the bed if you drink that."

And he was right, too. Only, it wasn't the bed I ended up wetting.

Two hours later and I'd finished everything. All the popcorn, as well as all the drink—not even the melted coke-flavoured ice cubes remained. My poor bladder was swollen so I felt like it would burst.

"Well, what'd you think," he asked, grinning. "Did you enjoy?"

"It was all right."

Thinking about nothing but my bladder, I pressed nervously against him, like it would somehow force the mass of people slowly making their way out of the theatre go faster. We were in the middle, not the top, thank god, but there were still half the people below us, all the people in the aisle in front of us, and a few pushers from the top who managed to jump ahead in line. I knew that it would be close. If everything continued at the rate it was going, I'd barely make it to the bathroom. Maybe even see the inside of a stall. But if something happened—someone stopped to chat, or there was already a line, I was toast.

"Just all right," Cole persisted, and at that moment I wanted to hit him. And he must've seen it on my face, the tight desperation that no doubt made me look pained, grimacing and squinting my eyes, shuffling my weight from foot to foot, for he said, "Hey, babe. You okay?"

Typical: there I was, needing to pee so bad that I would, had there been fewer people around, probably popped the top of my cup and squatted down right there beside him, and he's asking me if I'm all right. I mean, do I look all right, Cole? Then again, how are you supposed to tell your thick-headed boyfriend that you're bladder's about to explode and you're about to soak the seat of your faded jeans—and make a spectacle out of both of you by crying and running out of there with your hands pressed tightly between your legs. Feel like cleaning my pee off of your seat, Cole?

"Fine," hissed through a chewed lower lip, "Just need to pee, that's all."

"That's all?" accompanied by an it's-just-one-of-those-girl-problem chuckles. "That's all?" Taking my hand, he cried, in mock gallantry, "Out of the way, knaves, my princess has to pee!"

He began to force his way through the grumbling, protesting crowd, dragging me behind him.

Mortified, and more than a little scared that the jarring footsteps necessitated by his quick pace would cause me to prematurely lose control, we actually made pretty good time and got out of there a lot faster than if I hadn't said anything. Cole, for all his faults, is pretty good at pushing me—sometimes quite literally—and getting me to speak up for myself when I have a problem. That's part of what I love about him. Seeing the bright lights outside the theatre lobby, though, I think I might have loved him even if he were old, fat, and ugly. I was sure that my bladder problems would soon be resolved, and then we could really get into talking about the movie on the drive home. But I was wrong.

Immediately visible upon exiting was the line. Dreaded, terrifying, the worst nightmare of every woman with a full bladder (and some, I suppose, with full bowels too; there's no limit to what some women will do in public bathrooms; and just thinking about it makes me shudder), it stretched out of the S-shaped bathroom entrance, around the corner and out into the lobby, obscuring the doors of the theatre directly adjacent to ours. Judging from the women I could see outside, four blondes and one brunette,—there's a disproportionate amount of blondes living in Guelph—there were probably close to fifteen people waiting for a turn.

There was no way in hell I could wait that long.

I groaned, and Cole wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder.

"Don't worry, we'll find a throne worthy of your royal bottom!"

I really began to feel it then—the fullness, the pressure of it throbbing with each step of my foot and beat of my heart. At that moment, I would have peed in front of all the people present, lights or no lights, privacy or no privacy, if only to spare myself the shame of wetting my pants. For some reason, peeing exposed did not seem nearly as bad as wetting my pants. I mean, people have pissed outside naked for millennia, and no one saw anything wrong with it until relatively recently. Whereas, the modern human is taught as soon as they're old enough that it's not okay to use one's clothing as a toilet.

"Come on, this way."

We continued to wade through the post-movie crowds, headed, as I soon discovered, for the second tier of the movie theatre—where it was deserted and I could actually see the grey tiles of the first bend in the S-curve under the ubiquitous skirted pictogram. And I found myself thinking: thank god for small favours! But, as we approached, a final obstacle made itself known. A morbidly obese, greasy-haired, troll of a woman dressed in a Cineplex employee uniform that would have fit a silverback appeared from the shadows. She took one look at us and knew (I'm certain of it now) that we didn't have tickets—that, in other words, we didn't belong on the other side of her booth.

"Tickets, please," she snarled, glaring at Cole, then me, with so much contempt that I actually felt a little small (figuratively; I felt a lot small, physically). I shrunk against him, and he, my gallant knight, took a step forward, determined to slay the dragon. "Your tickets!" she insisted, as we drew confrontationally near.

"Listen," Cole began, squinting to read her nametag, "Mindy, my girlfriend really, really needs to use the bathroom, and—"

"Let me see your tickets."

"—well, that's the thing. We don't have any. We just came from a movie on the other side."

"No ticket, no entry."

"But my girlfriend really needs to use the bathroom. We'll be just a few minutes."

"I'll be quick, I swear."

In my mind now the tone of my voice at that moment was the same tone a little girl uses when asking her parents if it's all right if she open a single present on Christmas Eve—needy, expectant, almost certain that her request will be granted. But that troll, that ungainly bitch saw right through my teary-eyed puppy-dog act. She snarled a single, terse, NO, that was so loud a group of teenage boys standing nearby momentarily turned their attention towards us. I could feel their eyes on me, and I swear it felt like they could see right through me, see just how full my bladder was, how desperate my situation, because almost immediately after looking at us they erupted into a fit of raucous laughter.

"Please," I practically whispered, "Please, I'm begging you."

"No ticket, no entry," she repeated, and then gruffly addressed the people waiting behind us, "Let me see your tickets...."

Our audience with the monster was over.

"Come on, baby, let's get out of here, we'll find you a bathroom someplace else."

But I had retreated to a small, dark, quiet corner, beside some video game stands. I leaned against the two walls and slid slowly to a squatting position. Slowly, surreally, I was shaking my head at him, my face first a mask of disbelief and then horror so profound that he instantly knew what I was about to do—what I was doing. I'd let go without thinking about it, and at first there was no sign, not even the briefest feeling of relief. But then, oh my god, I felt the warmth. Harbinger of humiliation, it spread outwards from my groin and quickly filled the seat of my jeans (which were, thankfully enough, black denim, not faded blue or white). I groaned, placing a hand between my legs, and feeling the first of the shame tears induced by the cruelty of Mindy's refusal filling my eyes.

"Oh, Dani, tell me you're not—"

I nodded, bottom lip between my teeth, eyes wide and horrified.

"Jesus!"

Cole stepped closer—ostensibly to shield my illicit voiding from the view of passers-by, but I think part of him wanted to be sure, and I mean really sure, that I was actually pissing my pants in the middle of a crowded movie theatre. By that point the act itself was mostly finished. I'd consumed what probably amounted to two litres of pop in the span of two hours, and all of that, plus what little I'd had to drink beforehand, was now either soaking my clothes or dripping onto the dark purple carpet.

"I'm sorry."

"Dani, honey, don't."

"I'm so sorry."

I was crying then, not sobbing. The tears, like the urine, simply fell unbidden down my reddening cheeks. Cole reached out, wanting, I think, to provide comfort, succour, but unwilling to get too close—after all, what would people think if he somehow got his pants wet.

"Come on, let's go," he gently cooed. "Up you go, that's a girl," and finally he put his hands around my waist, more to steady me and prevent me from collapsing than anything else. "We'll go through so fast, no one will even notice."

But again, for the nth time that night, he was wrong.

"That lady wet her pants, look!"

The voice drew a quick shushing from his girlfriend, but not quickly enough for me to have unheard what was said. Heat from my cheeks flushed up to the tips up my ears, and the tears, which had fallen constantly, adopted a decidedly unhealthy pace as I continued to waddle towards the exit, my thighs squishing together loudly. Not to mention the fact that I was probably leaving a drip-drip-dripping trail of urine behind me as I went.

"Duuuuude! No way!"

A man—(both pimply and brace-faced) sneered to his friend, who promptly pointed and laughed. It was like a horror movie. Or rather, a high school movie. I felt like Carrie after the pig blood. The only way it could have possibly been worse would be if I had actually known them; known and gone to school with them. Then I would forever be Dani the Wetter, instead of just a faceless pair of soiled jeans. Cole stiffened, and I could tell he was about to whirl around and snarl at them, but I tugged on his shirtsleeve, again feeling like a little kid, in more ways than one, and we left without incident.

Outside was no relief, as the heat from the so-recently-spilled urine caused a small cloud of steam to follow us all the way to our car, where Cole actually made me wait while he piled plastic shopping bags on my seat! Gingerly, I sat down without a word, and remained stonily silent the rest of the trip home. Cole tried to make conversation—once in sympathy and once, to my utter disbelief, in a kind of condescending I-told-you-so, that went something along the lines of "I did say that that soda was too big for you"—but quickly shut up when it finally sunk into his thick skull that I was beyond talking and he was making it worse.

Later that night, when the sound of Cole's snores reached me in our bedroom, I found my thoughts returning guiltily to the soiled jeans and panties I'd casually tossed into the dirty hamper the moment I got in the door. For some reason, they called to me. Taking on a talismanic importance, I had this sudden need to have them with me, to hold them in my hands—if for no other reason than to banish the toddler's comment and the scornful laughter from my mind.

Rising softly from beneath the too-cool sheets, I padded quietly across the room to where my closet door, closed as always, hid the hamper and the pale yellow boyshorts within. It took me a moment or two—mostly getting over the horror of touching the damp, heavy fabric—to extract the panties from the jeans, but when I did, it was with immense relief. Hesitantly, I raised them, bunched up, to my nose and sniffed. That's when something really weird happened. I... I found myself becoming aroused, both from the smell and feel, as well as the memories associated with them. The same redness returned to my cheeks, only this time it was from somewhere else, somewhere more primal within me. I knew then what I would do. The only thing I could do to make the hurt and shame go away for every—I had to conquer it, claim for myself, make it mine.

So I did.