Associated Pressure
By C. M. Dougherty

Urinal Man
A death in the family phone call could not have come at more ominous moment. Not only was it a dreary Halloween morning when the phone rang, but Kate and I were on the rocks for what seemed like the thirty-fourth time in as many months. It always annoyed me when she said she needed "some time apart to get in touch with her feelings." We had declared our love for each other an infinite number of times over the past three years and I thought our feelings were well established. She had left that Halloween weekend to visit her best friend in Pennsylvania, for a full forty-eight hours of "getting in touch with herself." All this nonsense was really just another way of Kate saying "If you don’t get me an engagement ring soon, I’m gonna dump your sorry ass."

It would have been a nice to spend that Saturday on the couch nursing my hangover in preparation for a night of tricks and treats, but the phone rang and the answering machine clicked on to the sound of my sister crying.

My younger brother, Mike, had another seizure and was rushed to a hospital in Manhattan. He had two seizures over the past year and the previous episode had left him in a coma for three days. I tried my best to calm my sister, hung up the phone and proceeded to vomit in the sink. I jumped in the shower, leaned my head against the wall and had myself a bitter cry.

I stepped out of the shower and called Kate. I needed some soothing words to help ease my grief and anxiety, someone to say everything was going to be all right. However, when I picked up the phone and dialed the number I knew that I was also calling to gain some leverage in our latest fallout. Family tragedy is very effective medicine for alleviating relational aches and pains. With one call to Pennsylvania I would receive sympathy, understanding and a shift in power toward my direction. I found her friend’s number and made the call. It went something like this:

"Sara, hi it’s me, Chris. I need to speak to Kate. It’s very important." Sara sounded confused "Ah, Kate? Kate… ah left."

I was also confused "She left… what do you mean she left? She just got there last night.."

"She left this morning."

"This morning? It’s only 8:30! Where did she go?" I became frantic.

"I don’t know Chris!"

"Great! That’s just great, Sara. Thanks a lot!" I slammed down the phone, only to pick it up a second or two later, hitting the redial button.

"Look Sara, don’t fucking lie to me! Where is she?"

"She left!" she continued, lying.

"Don’t fucking lie! My brother’s in the hospital! Now where the fuck is she!"

"I told you I don’t know!" she shouted.

"You don’t know! You don’t know!"

We were both silent for a long moment when she said with a calm, sympathetic voice "Look Chris… I don’t want to get involved with you and Kate’s problems." And that was it. I then, painfully understood everything.

The stupidest thing I could have said, and did say, was "Problems? What problems?" Men, traditionally, historically, have a harder time accepting or seeing the truth, until they are holding it in their hands, broken to pieces, irreparable and, in general, too late to fix.

On the subway I had a hard time breathing and became claustrophobic as the subway car closed down on me. Other passengers were stealing glances at me from under their caps and above their books and newspapers. For the first time I became that guy on the subway, the madman who knew a secret and smiled to himself, the guy who, in a smaller town, might become dinner conversation.

A visit to St. Vincent’s Hospital ER is nothing shy of touring a combat hospital: cracked skulls, open wounds, dying junkies, spilled blood and vomit and the mentally ill, aimlessly wandering around with no apparent physical problem except the shit in their pants and the lice in their hair. This is where I found Mikey, alive, but not well, having broken his arm in a stairwell fall. His mouth was a bloody mess — apparently those powerful cerebral impulses violently set his teeth upon his tongue, severing it in half.So we had a strange one-way conversation, mostly filled with my yes or no questions. I forced a smile for him and let him know I cared. In his delirium I’m sure I seemed like the good brother. A good actor was more accurate because the only thing on my mind was Kate.

Fortunately, my visit was short-lived as the guy behind curtain number six, fresh from a violent car accident, expired and his young wife proceeded to wreck the emergency room in a fit of unprecedented rage. I was, gratefully, ordered to leave. I reached for my brother’s hand, looked down upon him as Jesus would have done and ran for the swinging doors, passing an old priest on his way to deliver last rites. It was only 10am; the rest of the day seemed very promising as well.

Let me pause here to reiterate the high points of this little Halloween horror story: My brother was in the hospital. My girlfriend was, for lack of a more accurate word, fucking an unknown individual — presumably male. I witnessed a young man die and I was rapidly approaching a career-high hangover that would not be remedied by anything less potent than decapitation.

I spent the next two hours on the waiting room telephone making calls to anyone who would listen. I was trying to keep out of my own head, so to speak. My parents finally arrived with my sister, I let them know Mikey was going to be all right and my mother broke down sobbing. When I told them about Kate, I immediately felt embarrassed because it seemed so trivial, all things considered, as if I enthusiastically told them about a wonderful bake sale on Canal Street. Death, and near death, it seems, take precedent over a broken heart, even though the latter can sometimes be more painful.

"We will physically stop you," said Will.

"Are you kidding? You’re not going home!" added Joe.

"Yes, I am. I have to" I said.

Understandably, I wasn’t in the mood for costume parties and/or trick-or-treating. "What are you going to do? Cry yourself to sleep over Kate? You’ll go insane!"

My friends were very casual about my traumatic morning, but I guess as long as you are one or two degrees removed from the pain, as they were, it is nothing more than a cool story, gossip fodder for an inner circle of friends. But, of course they were right. There was no possibility that I was sleeping that night and if I remained alone I would likely go insane.

So I did the only thing left to do: I drank. I drank and did as I was told: I put on my Halloween costume and fittingly became Urinal Man. Joe, Will and I put on white jumpsuits and strapped a plastic men’s urinal across our chests — side by side we were the Men’s Room Urinal Bank. I was given a black magic marker so other trick or treaters could affix their own personalized graffiti across our white suits. Will was the first to write across my chest: "For a good time call Kate: 555-SLUT." As I looked down upon his prose I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or take a swing at him.

At a West Village loft party I drank and danced with Cleopatra. Out on the fire escape Urinal Man and Cleopatra watched the Halloween parade pass below. Our conversation turned philosophically miserable and reached an embarrassingly deep level that I knew I would later blame on the alcohol.

And then, suddenly, came a marvelous idea…

Marching up Sixth Avenue dressed as a urinal with thousands of people screaming at you, "Hey, I gotta take a leak… I’m not joking" is something to experience. We three urinals marched in the parade, side by side, as the Men’s Room. Walking up Sixth Avenue I forgot about everything; I just laughed and enjoyed the unique perspective of New York. If you saw the parade, I was the tall urinal on the left with the demented grin. A few months later I found a two-page color photo of "The Urinals" in a book entitled "Masked Culture."

My fifteen minutes came and went. The parade was over and I became even more miserable than before. It was four in the morning when I called on Cleopatra, although she was no longer Cleopatra, just Melissa, a girl I had known for many years. Melissa let me in her apartment. I undressed without saying much, tossed my urinal to the floor and jumped in bed with her. I was happy just to sleep close to her. Just to have someone to pass the night with. Sex was the furthest thing from my mind and I quickly fell asleep.

I quietly watched the dust filter through the louvered sunlight. The morning stillness of Melissa’s apartment felt like a pleasant dream compared to the night before. I left a note for Melissa and quietly slipped out of her apartment. For some strange reason I felt exhilarated. Kate was due home in a few hours and I had every intention of rolling out the red carpet…