urinal 01.00 PETE

01.00 PETE

The shaved head guy at the next urinal says, ‘I go out on a night and piss it all down here, I might as well chuck £40 out of the window.’

Pete can’t go. She better wait. Lyn.

The bogs are full of shaved heads. Pete always imagines how bald guys would’ve looked before shaving came in, a time shift, they’d all look like friends of his grandad, blokes.

He can’t go. The girl says she’s called Liza but before her friends left he heard them call her Lyn. She better wait. He pushes, clenches. Running taps. Rivers. Rapids. Pete tries the trick Hanley told him, imagines pissing on little baldy’s head, all down the back of his shirt. He can’t go though he’s desperate, he can’t go and needs to get back to Liza, to Lyn, he hopes she’s waiting. She’ll wait, her friends have gone, he knows she stayed because of him, he can’t go. Shit! Waterfalls. Rapids. Great curling waves. Nothing. Piss! He knows the little guy knows he can’t, so leans in pretends to pee, shakes himself off. The cubicle’s occupied. Another bald guy takes his spot in the row of bald guys.

Pete looks at himself in the mirror. Runs his fingers through his hair, fit to burst.