Renata Belushi, Contributor
Due to a series of late-night confessions and some investigative social survey, I’ve been recently confronted with the horrifying truth that way more people are peeing in the dorm showers than I thought. Of the nearly twenty people that I asked, ten confessed to peeing nearly every time that they shower. However, the issue is astoundingly partisan—those who do not pee in the shower are disgusted by the practice, while those who do seem completely unaffected by such close proximity with the pee of their peers. In order to encourage open and free pisscourse, I designated a jury of twelve Oberlin College students in my dorm room. Below lies an abridged transcript of the episstemilogical debate that followed before tensions became too fraught and the conversation devolved into chaos. Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Immanuel Kant: First and foremost, why are you peeing in a place where you have to wear shoes?
Friedrich Engels: Exactly!!!
Immanuel Kant: In the comfort of your own home, in your bare ass feet…whatever. I don’t do it—
Rene Descartes: Lie! You’re lying. There are two people in the world: there are shower pissers, and there are liars.
Immanuel Kant: Shut up. I see people with their Free-People-ass shower shoes, and the bottom is downwardly curved, to like, hold your feet. But if you’re peeing with those shoes on, in the shower, the water stays in there. Guess what else does.
Rene Descartes: You know how much water it takes to turn piss into nothing? Not much.
Friedrich Engels: Not nothing, just a little bit of piss. Are you comfortable with even a little—
Rene Descartes: It DILUTES! It dilutes.
Sun Tzu: I don’t know. If the pee disperses that quickly, then why does it always smell like stale urine in there? The pee has to be getting absorbed in the grout between the tiles. It’s always there, it doesn’t matter how much water there is, it’s getting like, soaked into this, like, porous material.
Simone De Beauvoir: That’s why I stand on being pro-peeing. Because I don’t miss.
A Pause.
Rene Descartes: What? What are you aiming?
Friedrich Engels: Christ, do you squat over the drain?
Simone De Beauvoir: Yes! Because I’m a civil person.
Judith Butler: Yeah, well, you more stand over it. I mean, you have to do it while the water’s running and before you soap up—
Sun Tzu: No, you get in the shower and it immediately smells like hot piss. How are you not disgusted with yourself? You’re peeing in the shower, and it’s your piss, but heated up.
Judith Butler: Yeah, that’s why you start pissing immediately, so it’s your piss that you're in, and not the piss of the guy before you.
Michel Foucault: Really, there are worse things than piss in the showers. Like the fungus. Why would you be worried about piss when there’s fungus? And the piss is toxic for the fungus, did you know that? Here’s a fun fact: urine contains urea, which is used in concentrated doses to treat toenail fungus. It’s antifungal. Also, urine is naturally antimicrobial. It’s hypertonic and it has a low pH.
Sun Tzu: Maybe it helps the small minority of the population with athlete’s foot, but it harms all people with noses.
Friedrich Engels: Yeah, and it’s hurting you too. Here’s another fun fact: urologists say not to pee in the shower because you’re fucking, like, Pavlov-ing yourself into needing to pee at the sound of running water. So when you get old and you don’t have any control of your bladder anymore, you start pissing yourself every time you’re like, washing your hands or doing the dishes or something.
Carl Jung: You are a compulsive liar.
Friedrich Engels: It’s true! It’s fucking true! I read it on the internet! I read it on Google!
Carl Jung: What’s your source? What’s the actual source?
Friedrich Engels: Health dot com.
Carl Jung: Go fuck yourself.
Rene Descartes: Is that even so bad? It’s what happens when you get old. It’s normal. We get old, we get gross, we get ugly…we smell like piss.
Judith Butler: My piss doesn’t really smell. I’m hydrated. My pee is mostly water.
Friedrich Engels: So can only hydrated people respectably pee in the showers? Because we have to remember where we are. Look at the things we put in our bodies. Pepsi, Redbull, the Rat, crispy chicken Umami bowls…our piss is rank.
Sun Tzu: True. I never see people here drink water, ever.
Friedrich Engels: You freaks are probably just desensitized to the smell because you’re bathing in piss, you wear crocs in there, you’re definitely marinating your feet in piss, you’re tracking it into your side of the room, you probably smell a little like urine all of the time. And you don’t even know it.
Michel Foucault: So maybe only co-opers can shower piss. Hey, were people ever pissing in the no-curtain showers?
Judith Butler: Yeah, I mean—
Friedrich Engels: Ugh!
Michel Foucault: That’s crazy. With other people there?
Judith Butler: Oh come on, it’s a haze in there. The steam and the heat and the bodies…you don’t know what’s going on.
Carl Jung: Well, the whole communal shower situation is grotesque and horrifying in itself.
Judith Butler: Oh, don’t be a prude. The difference between pee and tears, chemically, is about ten percent. It’s basically the same as being cried on.
Judith Butler: That being said though, that’s also the difference between, like, cum and eye boogers.
Friedrich Engels: Yeah, what is the census on cumming in the shower?
Another pause.
Rene Descartes: Are you asking, like, what an acceptable amount of semen is to leave in a communal shower?
Friedrich Engels: Hypothetically, if you’re already justifying pissing in there, what really is the difference between that and blowing a load?
Sun Tzu: Right, they’re both decisions that you are making about your body where you thrust your biological remains on everyone else.
Friedrich Engels: In a space of cleansing. There’s spiritual connotations there.
Michel Foucault: Guys, guys, hold on. When did we get so against masturbating in the showers?
An uproar.