Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Where in the world am I? (16)

I am in a country where people seem to delight in pissing in the street. And not discreet pisses, behind a wall, against a tree, in a dark corner. No, people seem to prefer to whip their willy out in the middle of a busy sidewalk - ideally, close to a functioning streetlamp.

Now, in some places in this expansive country, this might be more understandable. In the 'other place', for example, the competitor city which I visited a couple of weeks back, public toilets are comparatively few and far between, and there is a small - but irritating (and, for the severely impecunious, decisively discouraging) - charge to use them.

But in my home city, there is a profusion of public toilets; all of them readily locatable (even when hidden away, as they so often are, in discreet little back alleys) by their distinctive, pungent smell; and all of them absolutely FREE.

And yet I regularly see people taking a leak against the wall of my local park - in the middle of a busy sidewalk, underneath a functioning streetlamp..... and less than 100 yards from the nearest (very prominent, completely FREE) public toilet.

Perhaps it's a case of "You can take the peasant out of the countryside, but you can't take the countryside out of the peasant"? If you've been pissing al fresco all your life, it must seem a little bit strange to go indoors to do it.

The degree of compulsive, defiant exhibitionism about public pissing here, though, does seem to require further explanation.

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