Paruresis (Round 2)

Let’s workshop this poem about a boating adventure of great torment for an adolescent who suffers from paruresis (shy-bladder syndrome)

---

Paruresis

1

In a private world at the speedboat’s bow, g-forced 
against the windshield as you teen-sip a cooler beer 
snuck in the deafening wind thrum, your sole hope 
is that the white-knuckle jumps—floating you, face
numb, from any tether but a handrail—will not end. 

But soon a subtle sense of glugging in your root
awakens the thought (faint enough to be put aside
for future you, but still shadowing your tipsy glee)—
the ticking thought of how, yes, you will have to pee
before this Hudson-River excursion is through.

2

After a dropped-anchor swim, you ascend the ladder
shivering to find the pressure potent in the burden
from gravity unblunted. Your stepdad and his buddy,
rivals for distance, micturate the meaty arcs of men
as you thieve glances toward land in refuge prayer.

Tank about full, beers in ice, lunch uneaten, the sun
yet to paint the river golden amber—your stepdad
gestures north, away from home, anchor in hand
dripping. Back on the bow, hope now lies in that beer
will shake loose the vice of psyche on your bladder.

You down the flat remains left from before the swim
and relax with pursed exhales. The engine roars alive.
But you high-shoulder it to the back, standing at a turn
starboard from the eye of your mom’s bestie (a stripper
at the Blue Moon)—the turn slight, not to seem shy.

Out you pull what you fear: a recoiled penis, hard
but tiny. The expected hope that she—feigning, 
you feel—to look away, factors in the cold water, 
is dwarfed by the hope that flow will start. “Please,”
puffs your closed-eyed supplication into the wind. 

You could go before a storefront crowd once started.
The issue has long been the weight of expectation
to start. But now, with the constriction in addition, 
how could you be expected in the ceaseless rocking 
to split your brain to bear down and let go at once? 

In a tone perhaps honed on lap-dance clientele,
your mom’s friend whispers just to red-faced you:
“Maybe it’s me.” Any confidence boost from her
sashay to the bow at best only makes up for what
was taken by those daggers and her giggles up front. 

The last hostage crisis for bladder compliance
was when you had to piss while a juvie officer,
close behind and with hand on holstered gun, 
leered through the ceiling convex in the corner 
mirroring sternly the pink cake of your urinal.

How you got through that time was by fixating 
on the urinal’s brand name: American Standard.
Nestled in the calming mantra you let yourself go.  
But here on the swaying deck, mountains distant, 
it is all open: nothing close enough to burrow into.

There are, no doubt, bits of brows, cheeks, nose.
But these prove too blurry to hook you into them.
Frantic enough to face ridicule from those behind
or from those on a boat now chopping by (waving),
you bring the tips of your fingers up to your nose.

In the shadow crevice where skin meets the tip
of the middle-finger nail, you attempt to fixate.
You cannot so do long enough to relax. The open,
radical, creeps in from the sides and so too does
worry about how you look with hand up to face. 

As you stand milking your pathetic little nub, 
the choppy wakes from the other boat conspire
in mockery of your distress. Bracing for balance, 
you find yourself incredibly, terribly, locking up 
all the more. “Fuuuck,” you sigh at a café decibel.

Meant to be windswept to them, this vocalization
is to convey that you are aware that they are aware, 
but that this is some anomaly never before faced—
a lie. “Stage fright,” the titty-bar dancer calls out. 
“Just go pee in the water,” your mom suggests. 

3

You bid your desperate body to the blue, its privacy
ruined by invisible waiting. How it will be possible
to unclench in this medium, freezing and thick,
you cannot fathom—the clock tick-ticking down,
before hearing something like “Fuckin' pussy!” 

Some sliver of hope remains. Are you not nearing,
after all, the point where the flow just has to start—
has to out of shear bodily necessity? And besides,
having been face slapped with humiliation already,
should not any nerves about humiliation be gone? 

Ducked below the port-side hull in futile attempt
to escape their gaze (their gaze by refusing to gaze),
in reflexive whispers you pray the water sounds—
wavelets lapping the fiberglass—will work the magic
that running faucets or flushed toilets sometimes do.

The engine shuts off. They are being kept, you feel.
You cannot stay down here all day. Before they voice
what you fear, what the withholding almost makes
worse, you resurface. The pressure unbearable in air, 
your face opposes the words “I went” to your mom.

4

It would have been an uplifting ending to embrace
your vulnerability under the middle-aged star, to let
the rebellious roar of the engine or the recognition
that we all struggle together in the face of oblivion,
have you let go to enjoy the little time you do have.

But the boat blasts forth again, you at the back now
alone. Face crimson, you churn your sideburn stubble
in need of escape. No escape, faster the boat careens 
into barge wakes and you claw up skin openly now
like some caged animal—their hoots growing distant.

Into a fetal ball on the floor, pissing your trunks
is what now needs to happen but will not happen.
What if the primal urge to void, you wonder, fails
to take over? What if your bladder ruptures inside,
the boat pounding down now from airborne over crests?

The others finally say, in unison as if post-huddle,
“We’re headed back.” It is clear that you have lied.
A lion-lugged gazelle well beyond longing for a future
afflicted by shame, beyond worry even about death,
your narrow sight nestles into a ziplocked sandwich. 

---

This poem is unpublished

Photo