Road trip beginnings

The first time I realized I had a problem was in the Summer of '96. My friend Jake and I, who were 14 at the time, bought tickets to some revised rendition of Disney's "Fantasia" and then, as was customary, wandered into an R-rated movie. This time it was action duo Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery teaming up against Ed Harris in the Michael Bay thriller, "The Rock." The film was impeccable but I was unable to enjoy it because in the first half hour there was a line of dialogue that deeply troubled me.

It is uttered in a scene where special agent Paxton (William Forsynth) and veteran FBI director Womack (John Spencer) are scheming about what to do with their archrival, Mason (Connery). They had held the poor man captive for many years without the right to a fair trial due to his impressive espionage skills, but in a twist of fate they now may need his help in diffusing a hostage situation on Alcatraz, AKA “The Rock.” The elder Womack is trying to convince Paxton that they should remove him from his cell and try and utilize his abilities to save the day, but Paxton thinks that despite his age, Mason is just too dangerous. Womack tries to make his case with the line,

"He is my age now for christ's sake. I have to wake up three times at night just to take a piss!"

That’s when a feeling of deep confusion and panic overwhelmed me. At the time I was seeing this movie I had just been bar-mitzvahed. I had just begun my path of manhood, and until this moment I thought that my three to five trips per night to the bathroom was a shared human plight. Peoples' nightly #1 schedules had never come up in a conversation in which I was present so I believed I was the norm in this regard. At this point in my life I had already contracted tendonitus in both knees destroying what certainly would have been a promising career as a distance runner, my pitching arm was in dire straights, I had tennis elbow, and now apparently I suffered from frequent urination. Over the years some of those ailments have waned but the frequent pissing at night symptoms remain fully intact.

At my parent's place, my Brooklyn apartment, or any other standard living quarters the problem is a minor nuisance. However, I recently opted to change my shelter to that of a soccer mom van, which I packed with clothing, camping gear, and a little mattress, and drove to the warm and cozy Southwest where I would sunbathe by day and gaze at the stars by night. However, I noticed that as the further south I got the weather was not changing. In fact, when I arrived in Amarillo Texas strung out from a 750 mile day, I hit a minor snowstorm and passed a thermometer that read 24 degrees f. It was cold, late, and dark.

I sought out the back of a Best Western parking lot, taped some sheets up to the windows, juiced the heat for a moment, and crawled into my sleeping bag to retire outfitted in every article of clothing I had packed. I grabbed my one empty poland spring bottle and hugged it like a teddy bear before dozing off. At about 2 am it was time to excrete some of the pepsi I had consumed much earlier and so I grabbed my plastic sleeping companion, lined up my hole with his, and went to work. When I sealed it shut I took stock of the situation and realized there was only another 8 ounces of empty volume left. I passed back out and awoke again at 4:00 am and again with an urgent need to relieve myself. This was not good. I knew I should have gotten the can over the 20oz. soda. Going outside would mean losing valuable heat from the car, needing to dig out my sandals and possibly alerting the cameras, which I imagined were monitoring the Best Western lot, that there was a homeless man with a terrible bladder lurking on their premise. Plus, the expedition would no doubt get my nerves pumping and destroy any chance of a full night of sleep. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I narrowly escaped an overflow, sealed the bottle and passed back out praying for at least a few hours before a next wake up. I lasted only another two hours. The jig was up. I gathered my sleep deprived self and watched the sunrise while letting my stream flow onto the tire of a benz.

As the sun began to show signs of its emergence I looked out into the surrounding lands and saw that there was only vast emptiness with a light sprinkle of snow precipitating down upon it . For as far as the eye could see there was nothing, just space. I imagine the nothingness may be a pleasant place to be for a monk as there are no distractions from the depths of the psyche, but for a neurotic paranoid northeastern Jew, sleeping and now pissing in the lot of a Best Western, with no clear destination, shivering from the cold, and sleep deprived, the last thing you want to be is alone with your thoughts, and that indeed was where I was. However troubling the moment was, it seemed that I had already encountered the purpose of this expedition – to learn to be okay with just myself, pitiful bladder included.