Dragons With Cancer

Let’s pretend life is easy. We know it isn’t really but why not make the effort? Don’t wash the dishes all at once. Do them one at a time, plate by plate, one item every time you go into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. Trouble is, that dirty cup, once you’ve drunk the coffee, might turn out to be the one item that gets washed, and so no progress at all will ever be made. Too bad.

Rhodri gave himself this advice one day, but the truth was that he preferred to ignore the dirty dishes in the sink completely. The idea of washing even a single cup promptly seemed impossibly radical to him. But there always came a time when the sink was so full and the smell so bad he was forced to take action. Then he would telephone his girlfriend and invite her around for a meal.

Naturally when she arrived and saw there was nothing from which to eat the food she would wash up for him. To be fair, he enjoyed cooking and wasn’t hugely untalented in that capacity. He didn’t see the tactic of phoning her as a trick; it was more in the manner of a business deal. He cooked, she cleaned. He chopped, she shopped. What was so wrong with that? He snored, she sneered.

A sink full of dirty dishes made life difficult in general. It was hard to fill the kettle when access to the taps was blocked. Pissing was even more fraught. Rhodri pissed in the sink more often than he did in toilets. There were several reasons for this, none of them compelling to anyone else, but so profound to Rhodri that he wondered if he should become a missionary for the habit.

But he doubted his ability to win converts. He just wasn’t eloquent enough. Other men would have to learn the advantages of pissing in sinks for themselves. He suspected that many were already convinced. In every man’s life there comes a moment when he has to make the crucial decision to piss in his first sink or not. The result can be life enhancing. But it can also end relationships.

He picked up the telephone and dialed a number. His girlfriend answered and accepted his invitation.

"Something Italian," he said.

"I’ll be round in ten minutes," she replied.

When the doorbell chimed he let her in and said, "Nearly ready. Do you want some wine with it?"

She followed him into the kitchen. "Christ, you’ve left the dishes for me again. This has to stop."

"It’s the last time, honest," he lied.

"I bloody hope so. Rhodri, what are you like? You’re a bastard, you know. I’m not your servant."

"I’ve got a corkscrew somewhere," he said.

He stirred the pot with an old wooden spoon, tapping it against the side in a carnival rhythm. He stood there without saying a word, waiting for her to finish the dishes. Soon they were all glistening on the rack, suds of liquid soap popping and oozing, the knives and forks standing at attention in a vase adapted for the purpose, ready to be dirtied afresh, returned to the sink, forgotten.

Rhodri served and they sat down together for the meal. The candles spluttered cheaply and the rain started beating on the windows, wanting to come inside where it was dry.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

He looked up. "Pissing in the sink. For the first time. The reasons why men cross that threshold. From sink virgin to sink tart. It’s one of the most important times in a man’s lower life, no less significant than his first wank. I should imagine it’s almost like a first parachute jump but the ripcord is the zip on a pair of trousers. A major thesis could be written on the exact moment when a man makes that fateful decision to piss in his very first sink."

"Don’t talk with your mouth full."

"Pissing in the sink is expedient and gratifying."

"I can’t understand you."

Rhodri chewed, swallowed, tried again. "I said I was thinking about how lovely you look tonight."

Her eyelashes fluttered. "You’re still a bastard."

In fact most men cross the threshold mentioned by Rhodri because of two concurrent factors: a full bladder and an occupied bathroom. First the man knocks on the door in desperation. The bathroom won’t be vacant for another fifteen minutes. What is she doing in there? Why has she locked the door? He paces outside on the frayed carpet and the entire universe becomes centered on the vast pressure inside his body, that yellow force, an undetonated golden explosion.

He is not utterly without options. He doesn’t have to burst. There is an empty cider bottle downstairs, he could fill that up and flush it away later. But what if she discovers him carrying it into the bathroom? He could go into the garden and water the weeds, but the house opposite looks directly over the low fence and always has faces in its windows. Sink or swim, that’s the truth.

It has to be the sink. She would understand, if she was reasonable, if women had equipment capable of pissing in a sink with such ease. But no, women have to sit down to drain themselves, lazy, inflexible, fussy. I have a bendy wand, the man tells himself, it’s not my fault but a gift of nature and one should always use a gift. I am a man. And I can piss in sinks. Just try to stop me.

In Rhodri’s case, he lifted the dishes out of the sink on his very first occasion. Now he didn’t bother doing that. He was aware that urine contains acid and that acid helps to clean the dishes. In fact he would aim at the encrusted remains of pasta sauce and seek to blast them off. This game resembled the chasing of soap around at the bottom of public urinal troughs but was more practical. His girlfriend’s weekly chore was made easier by his scouring arc of wee but he couldn’t tell her this and she wouldn’t be grateful anyway.

"Did you enjoy the food?" asked Rhodri.

"Very much. Listen, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you wash the dishes right now? Get them over with."

"Let’s have a cigarette first."

"You don’t intend to wash them at all, do you?"

"I made the meal, remember."

They sighed simultaneously. Rhodri scraped his fork along his plate and scowled. His girlfriend softened and finished her glass of wine. He softened as well and she smiled.

"Let’s sit on the sofa. I want to watch telly."

"I want to listen to music."

"Not that prog rock crap, please! Come on, there’s something on I really want to watch. A drama."

"Not one of those miserable working class plays?"

"Kitchen sink drama. Yes it is."

Rhodri froze. At the words "kitchen sink" something seemed to happen inside him. He realized that he needed to relieve himself immediately. But this might be an illusion. He knew how it is: after too much wine or cider or beer there’s often a feeling of great pressure down below even though the bladder might be less than half full. The sense of urgency is psychological. All the same he needed to go. It would be all he could think about until he actually went.

"Why are you squirming around?" she asked.

"No reason," Rhodri said.

She arched an eyebrow. "Do you need to use the bathroom?"

"That’s not it," he snapped.

"Just use it if that’s what you want. I’ll go and switch the telly on. Join me when you’re ready."

"Not the bathroom," Rhodri insisted.

"What do you mean?"

"Not the bathroom," he whispered. "Not there."

In his early student days, pissing in the sink was a time saving measure and meant he didn’t have to leave his room, locking the door behind him, to tramp down the corridor to the shared bathroom. It was more hygienic too because the taps and soap were close at hand. When he left the halls of residence and moved into various houses it was nicer to use the sink rather than a grubby toilet bowl.

So efficiency and delicacy were his original motivations. But like so many other things, what starts off for good reasons often continues as a tradition with no other justification than this: it’s the way I’ve always done things, I’ve been pissing in sinks since I was eighteen and now I’m nearly thirty, I don’t intend to stop, and if you don’t like it piss off! But Rhodri could never be that assertive.

His logic went like this: if you are assertive once you have to be assertive forever, increasingly assertive indeed, as other people adapt to your behavior. It’s a spiral. Rhodri didn’t want to ride that upside down helter skelter. Too stressful. He preferred the secret method, the clandestine piss, taking sinks unawares. If anyone had ever asked he would have disowned the custom.

And talking about spirals, that’s one of the benefits of using the sink. An opportunity to test the Coriolis Effect, the natural phenomenon that determines if liquid will empty down a plughole in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. Something to do with the rotation of the Earth. Rhodri had attempted on several occasions to reverse or at least disrupt the direction of the miniature whirlpool, using a spent matchstick as a gauge of currents and eddies.

How wonderful that science could be conducted at home in this manner, not that he expected his girlfriend to judge this a mitigating factor if she caught him. Like many seekers after knowledge throughout history his illicit research would earn punishment from those with power over him. His girlfriend would implement the severest penalty at her disposal. She would dump him.

Of course to test the Coriolis Effect, the sink in question has to contain a reasonable quantity of liquid, all of it attempting to descend the plughole at the same time. Just pissing in a dry sink doesn’t test anything, not even the patience of the pisser. Rhodri always ran the tap first, sometimes both taps at full force, and the gush of water usually filled a sink even when the plug wasn’t in.

In fact he preferred for the plug to be out. He disliked dipping a hand into a sink that is half full of water slightly yellow and slightly warm to snatch up the plug, and he had never known a plug chain to be unbroken and connected to the shore of the sink. Why is this? Who is the monster who breaks plug chains in every shared house in South Wales? Anyway, there is always the danger of discovery and sinks without plugs are safer. Understandably.

"Tell me what the trouble is," she persisted.

Rhodri grimaced and managed to say, "It’s just that I fancy another bottle of wine. Don’t you?"

"The shop’s down the road," she said.

"But it’s raining. I hate walking in the rain. I hate getting wet. Will you go for me? There’s a tenner in my wallet. Take the front door key and let yourself back in."

"I suppose I could," she grumbled.

"I’ll have the telly on for you when you get back. You like rain. The exercise will do you good."

She went and he hurried to the sink. This was the blissful moment, the chance to release the force inside him, the defining moment of the evening, his apotheosis, his salvation. The snatched piss in the smooth sink. A rupture of raptures.

He ran the cold tap but ran it slowly so he could indulge another of his favorite arts, the braiding of his own stream around the steady stream from the pipe. The two liquids met and embraced, knotting like a magical rope, one strand clear, the other straw colored. He closed his eyes and murmured in pleasure.

He heard the key turn in the lock. His eyes snapped open in alarm. She couldn’t be back so soon! The walk to the shop and back took five minutes. He tried to shut off the flow but his muscles refused to obey. If anything the force of his discharge increased. He tried again. Now he sprayed and puttered like a malfunctioning engine. Squeeze tight. Too late. She was in the kitchen.

"Red or white?" she asked. "You didn’t say."

"Yes," he muttered stupidly.

She moved closer to him. "What are you doing? You’re not pissing in the sink, are you? You are."

"I’m washing my willy, cooling it."

"No, you’re pissing in the sink. I can see it."

"I’m cooling my willy, honest. The chillies in the food are burning my willy, so I’m cooling it."

"You liar. There were no chillies in the food."

"I ate earlier. A curry. Just before you came in. Yes I’m greedy, I know that, but I’ll reform."

"Just have the decency to admit it."

"I’m not pissing in the sink, I’m not like that."

"Rhodri, we need to talk."

When his friends asked why they had split up, Rhodri just answered that things hadn’t worked out. He missed her a lot. But he wasn’t certain if the depression that followed was entirely due to her absence. He felt a growing dissatisfaction with his surroundings and realized he would have to change his address. How could he face the sink again? He was reminded of her every time he unzipped his fly. Standing in the kitchen with his trousers puddled around his ankles he leaked water from his eyes as well as from the more obvious outlet.

No, it wasn’t just her. It was something else, possibly everything else, that was grinding him down right now. It wasn’t even that he was a chronic loser, that truth created a different sort of down, a gloom that was always with him. But this new depression came from an unknown source and braided itself around his stream of self hating consciousness like a jet of piss around a gush of fresh water. It felt almost as if someone was pissing in the sink of his soul but without scouring anything clean. He couldn’t live long like this.

He thought about his girlfriend, the way she stood in the rain as if getting soaked wasn’t such a bad thing. He had never known her to be sarcastic. That’s why he knew it couldn’t be just her. He would wait for the sink to fill to the brim with dirty dishes and then decide what was his best course of action. He would never talk to her again even if they met accidentally in the street. She had made it impossible for him to apologize. After she stormed out of his house he followed her. Turning to face him, she had shouted:

"You arrogant bastard. You’re just like every other man. What makes you think you’re so fucking special? Men aren’t the only ones, you know. Girls can piss in sinks too!"

Yes it wasn’t just her. It was everything. The rain, the pubs and the people inside them, the books he liked to read, all his possessions in fact, his music, his clothes, even his opinions. Running away is never a real escape, he had been told this many times, and he believed it. But it wasn’t escape he wanted. Just a rest. A rest from himself, even from that part of himself that wanted a rest. This paradox was nothing to worry about. He needed a holiday or maybe something more than a holiday, a longer time away.

What are foreign sinks like?