In which I did NOT pee myself

Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed.
Forty years of things you say you wish you'd never said.
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead?
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red.
-- Patty Griffin, "The Long Ride Home"

The thing to keep in mind is that I did not pee myself.

I, like millions of Americans, spend Sunday mornings in my underpants reading the paper and marveling again at how I'm supposed to be this so-called book-lover and yet I can rarely ever find anything worth reading in the Washington Post's "Book World." "Oh, what's that? Another book on the War on Terror? A memoir by or about an over-medicated mother and/or daughter? Struggling with abuse? And weight? Perfect. But first, is that another chick-litty book about how hard it is to find [shoes/a man/a man who likes your shoes/self-worth/self-worth in shoes that no man actually cares about]? Thank goodness that particular well shows no sign of drying up any time soon."

Time spent with the "Book World"? Seven minutes: "...aaaaand done."

In this story, I'm in my underpants, I'm up, and Zach finally stumbles bleary-eyed into the living room. Also like millions of Americans on a Sunday morning, we get into an argument.

I had taken my cereal bowl and my coffee cup into the kitchen, rinsed them out, and put them in the dishwasher. I came back to the living room to continue being irritated with Marilyn vos Savant, the smartest woman in the world who writes for Parade magazine. (The thing that I love about that last sentence is how freeing the lack of punctuation is. Do I mean she's the smartest woman in the world and she writes for Parade magazine? Or is she the smartest woman in the world to write for Parade magazine? The choice is yours, dear reader.)

I was about to sit down when Zach asked, "Could you put something else on?"

"Are these unsightly? Or are they too alluring?" I wiggled my eyebrows enticingly.

"Dude, you peed in them."

-scene-

But like I said, I hadn't peed in them. In taking my cereal bowl to the kitchen, and in the process of rinsing out the bowl and putting it in the dishwasher, I may have accidentally splashed some suspiciously pee-damp looking drops on the exact crotch of my underpants. But I did not – I repeat, NOT – pee in them.

I went to my bedroom, horrified, to find a pair of flannel pajama shorts to wear, to cover the offending dude-it's-totally-not-a pee stain.

I couldn't let this challenge to my adult continence pass. "This is just like with that woman in Trader Joes."

"I'm sorry?"

"This. This, you accusing me of wetting myself."

"Is like the woman...?"

"In Trader Joes. The one who gave me the stinkeye?"

The day before, Zach and I had made a last-minute stop at the Trader Joe's next door to pick up a jade plant to take to P. Lunnie's housewarming party. There were more people inside the Trader Joes than outside – in, like, the entire city of Rockville. Everyone was there, everyone was buying mini-quiches, and everyone was already in mile-long lines.

I, with my jade plant, had 4 minutes to make the purchase and get to the bus stop to catch the Ride-On that would take us to some unexplored part of Silver Spring to feel uncomfortable for an hour and a half around people neither Zach nor I knew very well.

A register was about to open up.

Seeing my chance to accept this gift from the universe, I started to make my to the check-out. That was right about the time when the tiny Filipino woman shoved her even tinier Filipino mom in front of me, blocking my way and holding the place in line for the tiny Filipino woman and her two packed-to-the-brim shopping carts.

I now had 3 minutes.

"Do you mind," I asked – I asked politely, by the way; not in the usual way the words "do you mind" generally leave my lips – and held up my sole purchase of a jade plant. "Do you mind if I go ahead of you? I just have this—" I shook the jade plant both for illustration and for emphasis "—to buy and I have cash."

She gave me the stinkeye.

She gave me the stinkeye like I was trying to get away with something. Like I was offering her a share in a Nigerian bank scheme and she knew better – angrily better. Like I was asking for something outrageous, and she had just reached the too-old-for-this-shit stage. She gave me the stinkeye like I was the unreasonable one.

I stepped in front of her mom, her two shopping carts, and her stinkeye. I made my purchase. I left the store.

"Did you see that?" I asked Zach as we hurried toward the bus stop.

"What?"

"The stinkeye. She gave me the stinkeye?"

"Who?"

"In there. In the store. The Filipino woman and her mom of check-out-line aggression."

"What happened?"

So I told him the story that I just told you, about the woman and her unreasonableness and how I thought it was pretty ridiculous, her being all stinkeyed about it, since all I wanted to do was buy my goddamned jade plant and get to the goddamned bus stop so we could go to this goddamned housewarming part so that we could give the goddamned jade plant to the hostess so we could get the hell home.

"Well, maybe she had to get home, too," Zach offered.

"Who?"

"The Filipino woman. Maybe she had had a long day, and maybe she was wanting to get out of that madhouse just as much as you were, and maybe she was irritated that she had been standing in line longer than you had, but you were wanting to get out before she did."

"But that line wasn't even open yet, so she couldn’t have been standing in that line longer."

"I mean in general. She was there before we got there, waiting."

"Okay, but— just whose side are you on, here?"

That's the thing about Zach. That’s the irritating thing about Zach that I both adore and despise. He’s on the side of "truth" – he’s calm and rational, where I am fraught and emotional. I want him to take my side, regardless. He wants me to understand that sometimes my side is unsupportable. In all honesty, I need Zach and his point-of-view at such moments because if left to my own devices, I can be a selfish monster.

However, that moment wasn't the moment.

Which is why the fight about whether I did, or did not (and remember: I DID NOT), pee myself took on such an emotional tint.

"I wish you would take my side more often," I explained, after the initial heat of embarrassment and anger had abated. "I wish you would trust me enough to know when I've been wronged by a Filipino woman in a Trader Joe's, and when I have or have not – and P.S.: I have not -- peed myself."

"I didn't mean for it to be shaming," Zach offered back, lamely (I thought; because hi: how else am I supposed to take a charge of peeing myself, especially when myself is about to turn 34?). "I just didn't want you getting pee on the couch."

"IT ISN'T PEE!!!"

It's a joke now, the argument. Two weeks of continence and hindsight allow both of us to say, periodically, "You'll find me in the bathroom, peeing outside of my underpants."

The need for trust is still there, though. My need for him to believe that I am a responsible adult, and that my life that appears messy at times is under the control of someone rational and reasonable. That, too, is why the argument happened, I think. There's the "real" Mike that I think exists – and then there's the real Mike that actually actually exists. My Mike is always right when he's always wronged. The Actual Mike, however can be petty and vindictive over imagined grievances. I'm ashamed of the Actual Mike; however, what I forget is, Zach is dating the Actual Mike. That other Mike only exists in my head.

Still, if nothing else: I don't pee myself. And that Filipino woman was totally in the wrong.