Bathroom Adventures (19)

Ah, the bathrooms again.

For a split second, the thought that I should look for the coveted bathrooms crosses my mind, but my vanity prevents me from doing it. Or maybe it is my habitual rebelliousness. I don’t want to be like other women who use the bathroom at every stop as a precaution, to avoid future emergencies. Go for the sake of going just in case... I decide to take the risk and well, be different. 

Back at the car, I squeeze myself in the back seat next to Anna, but this time I’m carrying a shopping bag. Not that it’s that big. It contains only some bread, cheese, and vegetables. My cravings and ideas about what to eat are on strike when I am out of my routine and my familiar environment. So, I go back to basics and buy things I can make and eat on the move. 

We are on our way to the coast again, where a four-bedroom house awaits us. I don’t know the name of the town we’re headed to; I only know it’s not a long drive from where we are. It’s getting dark already and there is not much to see. The road is deserted, like most of the freeways we’ve been on. Maybe because there are no big cities nearby, or maybe people here don’t use their cars as much as in the States. 

Rita calls the Airbnb host on speakerphone to alert her that we are on our way. The host has to unlock the door for us and have us sign in. Rita asks her for the code on the lock but the woman says it is a special lock that only she can open. The call drops. Rita dials again. For some reason, she decides to arrange this whole thing while driving, which is so unlike her. It makes me nervous but I say nothing. Let Vera do the dirty work or Anna, and if they don’t care that Rita is putting our lives in danger, well, then I will live with it and hope for the best. I don’t really expect Anna to say anything, though. She’s been silent for hours, preoccupied with something she is not sharing with us. Probably her daughter or her financial troubles. 

The Airbnb host answers the phone. She can’t meet us before seven o’clock, which means that we have to find something to do until then. The woman speaks pretty good English, even better than Rita. Strangely, I have not noticed that Rita speaks broken English until now. Because most of my interactions with her take place during our walks, I hear her speaking only Hebrew. Unless Fred calls to talk about nothing, which he seems to do every two hours because I can’t think of even one time that I walked with her and he didn’t call to ask “Where are you? What are you doing? How’s it going? What’s up? What are you going to do later?” over and over again. In return, she reports to him about where she’s been and what she’s done during the last couple of hours, even if it’s as mundane as going to the post office or getting gas. I used to think that she was speaking poor English on purpose, to sound girly and cute, to make him feel smart and manly, but now I realize that she really does speak English poorly, despite having lived in an English-speaking country for nearly twenty years and running a small business where she has to constantly negotiate with American customers.  

“Do you have the address for this house?” Vera asks the obvious. 

“Yes,” Rita says. “I think it’s on the edge of town.”

“Is it in a safe area?” Vera persists.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s safe. We’ll go look for the house and then check out this little town,” Rita reassures her while fumbling with her phone.

With this reassurance, the talking dies down. Rita chooses some music on her phone and lets it fill the car. I stare out the window, trying to figure out how I feel about my situation. I know I am not suffering or super annoyed with the way things are unfolding, but I am also not terribly happy either. I feel trapped sitting in this car, in the dark, listening to Israeli music and having no idea about where I am going and what to expect. Moreover, the heavy brooding emanating from Anna is beginning to affect me. I wonder if Rita and her mother can feel the gray cloud that hangs above her and spreads its tentacles onto the upholstery of the back seats. I want to say something to bring her out of the hole she’s in because soon it will swallow me too, but I am not sure I’m the right person to do it.

My gloomy stream of consciousness comes to an abrupt end when I suddenly feel pressure in my bladder. Damn it. I might have to ask Rita to stop for me somewhere. I don’t want to do it. I feel stupid and mad at my body. I trusted it; I was sure it wouldn’t give me any trouble. I felt so confident before we left the supermarket. Arrogant me. And now look where it got me. I’m forced to be like everyone else. I am not going to say anything. Not yet. I think I can hold it for a little while longer. Besides, there is nowhere to stop. I’ll wait. Not that I have much choice. 

I’m trying to ignore the awful sensation, but it’s almost impossible. Anyone who’s been in this situation knows it can quickly become unbearable. Maybe for men, it’s not as bad as it is for women. Their anatomy allows for improvisations. But for us women, there’s not much flexibility. Especially when we find ourselves in a foreign country, on a dark, unfamiliar road, and all we can see is… nothing. I find myself thinking about all the other times I found myself in this predicament, and how it never ended up with me getting arrested for public exposure. 

In Bolivia, I was once sitting in the back of a rickety bus that was heading to La Paz. The trip, I understood, was supposed to take about ten hours. After several hours of bumping from side to side on the unpaved roads, I began to wonder if I might have been the only passenger who needed to pee. Because I was the only foreigner on the bus, and quite young, I didn’t dare approach the bus driver and ask him to stop just for me. So, I waited, stared out the window, and did lots of breathing exercises. When the driver finally stopped, I followed the passengers outside and found myself standing in the middle of the Bolivian altiplano with not a single tree, rock, or bush for cover. From one end of the horizon to the other, three hundred and sixty degrees around me, all I could see was flat earth and blue sky, with absolutely nothing to disturb it.

I didn’t know what to do. I looked around to see what the indigenous people of the Bolivian highland do, and to my utter surprise, I noticed that the men stayed on one side of the bus, turned their backs, and did whatever men do. The women went to the other side, crouched down, and peed under their colorful and stiff traditional skirts, leaving a wet spot behind after they rose and walked back to the front of the bus as if what they had done was nothing out of the ordinary.

I was amazed at the simplicity of the solution, and admired the women’s practicality; but unlike these women, I was wearing pants and underwear. I had to quickly shed my learned modesty or suffer the consequences. I pulled down my pants and peed by the back wheel, hoping I would not become the talk of the town before I arrived in La Paz. To my relief, the women barely acknowledged my presence. I went back to my seat knowing that from that moment on, I would always, always wear a skirt when traveling.

I know that Portugal is not Bolivia, but I still travel wearing a skirt or a dress. This morning when I got up, I put on black leggings and a long-sleeve tunic that comes down almost to my knees. I can pee under my tunic like I learned to do in Bolivia when my sense of adventure was a little sharper. Hopefully, I would not wet my leggings and tunic like I did in Bolivia, because that flowery skirt I wore afterwards was the flowy kind that stuck to my legs when I crouched down to pee.

I finally break down. “Rita, if you see a place you can stop, I really have to pee.” I have reached the point where I either have to swallow my pride or die a proud woman. The human body has little leeway when it needs to rid itself of certain elements and as a member of the human race, I have little choice in the matter. I don’t tell her, though, that I want her to pull over right now so I can pee on the side of the road under my tunic like the women from Bolivia. I’m not there yet.

“Okay,” she says, unfazed. I don’t expect to hear concern in her voice. I am definitely not the first woman to make this request of her. Last year, she took two eighty-year-old women on a road trip from California to Yellowstone and everything in between. I imagine she had to stop for them many more times than she will ever have to stop for me.  

Truth is, I really need her to stop right now, at this very second. We just crossed a small bridge above a narrow stream and it looks like there’s a field next to it. She can stop for me here, on the side of the road. I can disappear into the darkness and come back in no time. But I don’t want to make a scene and beg. I regret not saying anything earlier, because now it is already too late. I feel like jumping out of the moving car and putting an end to my misery. Just open the door and do it. Please stop please stop please stop. That’s all I can think.

I also panic because Rita seems to have forgotten that she needs to stop for me. We just passed a small industrial zone and entered a small town. There are apartment buildings on one side of the street and one-story houses on the other. I think I missed my chance to pee on the side of the deserted road. There is no one on the street. Only parked cars by the sidewalk. Maybe I can do it here, although I don’t think I can pee on the sidewalk. I am not a dog. And the people who live on the top floors would be able to see me and I don’t need to feel more humiliated than I already do.

The GPS sent us to a dead end and we turn back. Rita makes a U-turn and before she accelerates, I ask her to let me out of the car. If I don’t pee now, I will succumb to my own poison. I imagine myself peeing by the car door like the seasoned traveler that I am. I’m surprised that Vera says nothing about my little drama. She sure has stories to share about this issue, but she chooses to remain silent. I bet that if she didn’t know me, she would have told me that I should have used the bathroom at the supermarket, but luckily, she knows better. Anna and Vera are absorbed in their own world. I would have expected women to show some female solidarity, and commiserate about their past mishaps, but no sisterly empathy is offered. Today, it’s every woman for herself. 

I get out of the car and look around. Just as I start to pull my leggings down, I see a group of people coming out of a house at the end of the street, where we just made the U-turn. I pull the leggings back up. I need some privacy and I can’t take the risk. I get back in the car.

“I’ll find you a place,” Rita promises, her inner tour guide kicking in. I think she finally grasps the gravity of my situation.

Since I can barely breathe now, I stare out the window trying to imagine how life will be after I pee. I promise myself that I will never skip a bathroom stop. I will be more aware of my limitations. I will be more compassionate to everyone. 

Again, we are driving through an industrial section of town. Rita parks outside a gas station. I enter and ask the attendant if there is a bathroom at the station. He points to a small shed standing in a dark field that begins where the gas station ends. The only thing that connects the shed to the gas station is a row of stepping stones—not even a paved walkway. If not for the small light above the door showing the universal symbol of women’s bathrooms, I would have assumed it was a tool shed. The shed is not locked and I don’t need a special code to open the door, I am told. 

The first thought that comes to my mind is that I should not go there. Someone might be hiding inside or behind the shed. I might be walking into a death trap for all I know. This place, I am sure, is not among Portugal’s most popular tourist hot spots. I have to decide what to do. There are three women in a car across the street waiting for me and my body is screaming hell. Since the attendant does not give me any criminal vibes, I decide to take my chances. If someone decides to bludgeon me to death, he will not get much out of it. All my stuff is in the car and I’m not wearing any jewelry, not even a watch. 

The bathroom is surprisingly not filthy or smelly and has running water. There is even toilet paper and soap by the sink, unlike some places I saw during my travels, like in… yes, Bolivia or Peru, where I once entered a dirt hut that was used as a unisex public toilet if I can call it that. Inside, there were four holes in the ground with dividers between them, but no doors. These unisex toilets were present in Bolivia decades before transgender people made the use of gender-preferred bathrooms a topic of discussion, let alone a political fight. In my present condition, I would have welcomed gender-blind toilets without any problem.  

After my body returns to normal, I push the door open with my elbow and walk back to the car. When I ask if anyone wants to check out the bathroom before we take off, they all say no.