- Peeing Ugly: anyone who disagrees is lying or too drunk to notice.
- Peeing Quietly: my idea of the perfect horror film is a movie where a woman is peeing and you can hear it. Horror not of the woman, but of whoever's behind the camera, watching. Every time I pee I try to do it a little quieter, in silent solidarity with horror protagonist #69.
- Peeing Cutely: for Christmas I buy myself a potty putting green and spend an hour with my legs going numb, trying to engage my forearms and putt the ball into the hole and failing, failing, failing.
- Peeing Philosophically: I prop my chin on my clenched fist and pretend I am thinking, like that one statue where the guy looks like he could really use a glass of Miralax or alcohol or both at the same time, if that's possible. I think that's possible. Right now I think I'm too real to be thinking. That I'm not good enough to be called anything but an accident, a bodily function, a trick of the light.
- Peeing Painfully: inheritance often takes many forms, like money and hair types and disease. Sometimes I think of the pain as a burden or a metaphor for girlhood or a curse from an ancestor who's mad about the thing I said yesterday about gay people, like, actually being real. Most times I'm just trying not to combust or curse my own insides for curling silently like smoke in my stomach.
- Peeing Regularly: on these days I drink eight glasses of water and take my meds and do cardio for thirty minutes. I meditate for exactly fifteen minutes right before going to bed and I fall asleep in my freshly washed sheets knowing that I owe myself nothing less.
- Peeing Not at All: I can't tell whether it is truly because I don't have a minigolf course to keep me company or whether the golf is supposed to symbolize something else. I'm pushing down, down, down and this time I swear my guts have twisted themselves into a Chinese proverb for fate or payback or whatever my ancestors would like to believe is fitting. It burns, you know? Feeling like you're not real? Feeling pissed off because your family believes you don't exist? I down three glasses of cranberry juice, my pants still around my knees. The sediment accumulates between my teeth, notches itself like a knife under my tongue. Still, nothing. Still, I keep trying. I keep trying. I keep—
