The Drip Dominatrix rules her bladder

Urination is not, I realize, only a women’s issue, but I’ve spent too much of my life with crossed thighs, jiggling up and down, to ignore its urgency. I’ve always been a frequent player in the wee wee game, but as I rounded 50 I began an increasingly habitual attendance on the porcelain horseshoe. BBC News recently reported that people go to the bathroom on average six times daily, so – being a chronic over-achiever – I’m way above average.

With all that global urine, things could get out of control. I was disconcerted to read on the Johnson Space Center website that there’s a lot of astronaut drizzle floating around in the cosmos. Their spaceship toilets use air flow to send the poop for packing while the liquid is “vented into space.”

I bet rockets have unisex facilities but I wish local theaters and museums would pay attention to the reams of studies that show that time and space per use all indicate the need for twice the toilets for women’s restrooms to achieve parity with men’s. Partly that’s because we sit down to piddle; partly that’s because we have a richer range of bathroom activities to cover.

Clearly, there has never been gender parity in urination, particularly in the Department of Stand-And-Spray-Anywhere. My niece and her man lived without running water in a house in the woods. In the winter her partner would stand out on the second floor porch and take a whiz down onto the snow. She soon joined him, achieving perfect aim. “The trick,” she says, “is to pull up and separate the labia majora, although it probably depends a bit on the configuration of your parts.”

To give less adventurous women that upright opportunity, a British company is marketing the SheWee, a plastic funnel-like gadget for women to use standing up or squatting. You pull aside your underwear, put this thing against your privates and direct your pee. Good for avoiding nasty toilets or bushes of poison ivy, apparently. And it’s reasonable. Just ₤5 British pounds, plus ₤1 for the Flexible Outlet Pipe (if you like your spouts long) and ₤1 for – are you ready? – gift-wrapping. Still looking for that perfect Mother’s Day gift?

But it’s not just a question of gender posture during the act. One health authority says that “Women experience incontinence two times more often than men” – especially older women. It’s all about the muscles, they say. Perhaps that’s why so many women are advised to do Kegel exercises, contracting their pelvic floor muscles a gazillion times a day. What muscles? Think the pubococcygeus muscles. Okay, think stopping mid-stream.

I wish I had done my Kegels before that day of the big storm last winter, when I got hung up in a traffic jam for hours. The pee-pee pressure built beyond bearing. At last, in desperate, bug-eyed need for relief, I saw a Starbucks. I parked and ran in shrieking at the startled young girl behind the counter, “Help me! Help me!” She understood immediately, grabbed a giant key holder and charged the rest room door. My savior.

There’s a whole new approach gaining popularity – again in Britain. (I see a pattern here, but I’ll say no more.) It’s most informed proponent is Jean, the self-styled Drip Dominatrix. She told me that despite improving her muscles with a plethora of Kegels, she still suffered from “urge incontinence” – the inability to hold it any longer just as you put your key in the front door. Because these dribbles or floods inevitably happen on your approach to release, there appears be a huge psychological aspect behind the urge.

The Drip Dominatrix says, “It’s all about who’s in charge – you or your bladder. This urge incontinence must be resisted at all cost. I hold a dialogue with my bladder, saying ‘No, bladder – I’m in charge, not you.’ What a spectacular success!” She converted a mutual friend of ours who told me that now, when she gets off the bus and turns the corner into her street (her personal urge trigger), she stops, looks down at her crotch and screams, “No! No peeing!” And it works. Unfortunately her neighbors now shun her and the kids on her block gather to watch her in fear from the other side of the road. Imagine if she whipped out her SheWee, instead, and made use of the little park at the corner.

Comments

[lynne friedli]

Christian Davies, the daughter of a brewer, born in 1667 (died in London Chelsea Hospital in 1744) was one of a number of 'female soldiers' in the 17th and 18th century who made full use of contemporary 'shewees', although the ones they had sound much more stylish:

"it was very easy to her, by means of a urinary instrument, a silver tube, painted over and fastened about with leather straps"

The British Heroine 1742 (British Library)

Mary Hamilton, who married Mary Price in 1746, (and subsequently two other women) used hers for a rather different purpose it seems:

"she deceived her wives on each occasion by means of something too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature".

(Henry Fielding The Female Husband 1746 and somerset court records)

Readers of this blog may like to know that according to Fielding, Mary Hamilton:

"was no novice in impurity, which, as she confessed, she had learnt and often practiced at Bristol with her methodistical sisters...."

nothing new under the sun it seems.

[Sue]

Lynne, there is simply no scholar on the earth like you. Reminds me of the old days in London when I had the radio show and you were my most erudite (and fetching) interviewee on all matters transgressive. Thanks so much for these riveting tidbits.

[Joan Price]

> people go to the bathroom on average six times daily

Oh goodness, whom did they interview to get that figure? Sure not women, nor anyone who drinks coffee! I go that often before noon, thanks to both being a woman and drinking cofee!

About Kegels -- the key is to do them slowly, as if your pelvic floor has a zipper you're zipping it up one notch at a time. I include full instructions in my book.

Joan Price
http://www.joanprice.com/

Author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty (http://www.joanprice.com/BetterThanExpected.htm )

Join us -- we're talking about ageless sexuality at http://www.betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com

[Kath]

I spent an interesting afternoon once opbserving my bladder on an ultrasound machine. I could see the kidneys delivering urine to the bladder, a process I had always imagined as "the drip system". I couldn't have been more wrong. Think "water pistol system". Urine shot into the bladder in strong bursts. Suddenly I realized where that urge to urinate came from... increasingly sensitive bladder walls react to the bursts from the kidneys by sending out the pee alarm. NOW when my pee alarm sounds, I stop and think... Is my bladder really full or did I just get a full blast from each kidney? If I know I haven't gotten near capacity, I just tell my bladder to shut up and relax. Works wonders.

It helps not to gulp that hot drink too fast. Gulp it down and it'll all be shooting into the bladder at once giving the walls no time to adjust.

Think of the pee alarm as if it were a smoke alarm. Just because the smoke alarm goes off, you don't necessarily have to dash out of the house. You may just have to turn down the stove and give the air a chance to clear. Just give it a little time.

[Sue Katz]

Kath, what a fabulous image.I want to know more. I never imagined that it worked the way you describe, but what you talk about fits what the Drip Dominatrix says about maintaining control. Thanks.
Sue