On Sunday, April 23, 2023, Greta walked past a small seating area.  A young man rose from a white leather chair.  He approached Greta from behind, slowing to match her pace.  His hand came down on her shoulder.  They walked.  Had it not been for his hand on her shoulder, which she could have mistaken for a purse strap, she might have dismissed him.  But she didn’t own a purse.  She was carrying a bag.   

When they passed Hot Topic, the man loosened his grip.  He said, “Miss?” 

She stopped.  “Yes?”  

“I was hoping for a favor?” 

Greta turned. 

People brushed by in both directions.  She felt a wave of compassion.  He had very long arms and bony wrists.  She recognized him from Live Stream.   

His name was Peter.   

*

Peter looked around him, as if bewildered by his surroundings. 

“Is this uncommon?”  Peter needed to know. 

“Not really,” the plumber said.  He was dropping his tools into his white plastic utility bucket.  “Totally catching on, here in the States.  First in your building, though.” 

He stepped forward and gave the urinal a vigorous flush.  “Would you look at that?”   

Peter did. 

“Care to give her a whirl?” 

Peter shook his head.  Not yet.     

*

They stood near the food court.  It didn’t matter that the restrooms, just past the arcade and down the hall from the customer service kiosk, were, by any standard, as private as one could wish.  Peter was paruretic.  (Although Greta preferred to think he suffered from shy bowel syndrome.)  To be the sort of man for whom urinating in a public restroom was impossible?  Well, this was more problematic than you probably imagine.  And those in the know?  Well, despite popular opinion, Peter’s condition had nothing to do with proximity to privacy. 

Would Peter trade his newfound fame for physical release? 

Peter felt the question was unfair.  A trap.  Asked in bad faith.  Would Helen Keller trade all that she had gained, when, after ….   

Before though. 

He certainly didn't want to be sick.  He endured months of cognitive behavioral therapy only for the end result to net …. 

Nothing.   

Next, Peter agreed to gradual exposure therapy.  Electing to have his best friend, Alphie, stand outside a public restroom (while Peter limply stood before a urinal, back tense, blindly staring into a white tile) before, when prompted by Peter’s counselor, he slowly entered the space, one step at a time – one breath at a time! – as Peter, counting backwards from ten, hoped to squeeze free just one drop of the two Red Bulls and two cups of coffee he hours earlier ….

Nothing.     

*

He began filming himself.  Perhaps, Peter thought, he might see the problem.  Maybe, he reasoned, the issue was mechanical.  Something to do with the way he stood.  Angled himself.  After all, all he had ever done was talk.  Only what was he supposed to say? 

One day he could.  The next day he couldn’t.

*

“Well,” Greta said. 

“Thanks,” the man said.  Before Greta could rejoin, Peter added, “I’m actually in a hurry myself, so it’ll only be a minute.” 

He held up his phone. 

Greta didn't play, but of course she was familiar with the game. 

She knew what the black and yellow squares meant.  She understood that Peter was down to his last guess. 

*

Peter couldn't remember why he first posted himself online.  Perhaps he had done so accidentally.  When he hinted as much during his first AMA, the flood of comments in his thread were so vicious, so full of vitriol, that virtue compelled him to apologize, and, he thought, gently backtrack. 

This made the situation worse. 

It was best to take the loss, and to neither apologize to or acknowledge those who called him a phony, a charlatan, or Late-Stage Capitalist (whatever that was).  Amicably, generously even, he answered the friendly questions from his rapidly growing fanbase. 

Whatever happened had nothing much to do with history, anyways. 

*

At first he had some trouble.  For what is a camera if not a lidless eye?  To overcome this reservation, Peter closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured the different objects he had placed by his sink and shower.  All that came to mind were the words for them.  Even Peter’s testicles, which he could plainly see if he opened his eyes (and felt, like broiled shrimp, in his hand) eluded him.  When worst came to worst he opened his eyes and focused on his bookshelf, which he had installed over the urinal.     

Simply constructed—he designed the shelf to ensure that its parts were mutually suggestive—this was a complex object in detail, what with its books and totems.  Again, he closed his eyes.  Again, his mind failed him.  He couldn't recall if there were four or five shelves.  He created mnemonic devices – words for the words of the objects he couldn't see, hoping that this strategy would help him to picture material goods so close he could smell them. 

Again.  Nothing.   

*

“Five letters,” he said.  Third letter, ‘z’.” 

            As if Greta couldn't see. 

*

At the end—directly before contacting the plumber—Peter began praying the rosary.  After nestling as close to a urinal as possible, squaring his stance, and unzipping, Peter closed his eyes and, silently, recited the Apostles’ Creed.  Next, he mumbled The Lord’s Prayer.  This was downtown, at the bus station.  A place where men peed with careless abandon.  A venue, one could argue, where men peed professionally.  When nothing happened, and he lost count—he never came close to the Second Decade, let alone the Glory Be—he started over. 

Before long, he forgot parts of the Hail Mary completely.

*    

“Yes,” Greta said.  “I see.”   

*

Hurrying home from the bus station—he didn't trust himself inside a cab—Peter realized that he didn’t feel …. 

And then he realized that he was …. 

It all happened so quickly! 

He didn’t have time to think.  A blessing.  He simply continued walking.  There was the problem of entering his building, but that, like standing in a line, would just have to wait. 

He took a seat at a bench about a block from his flat, unlaced his Adidas, and, defeated, poured his sneakers atop a patch of green grass. 

It wasn’t the woman.  It was the dog the woman walked who turned and looked at him with disgust.    

*

Even though they are dissociated, UrineTrouble posted in the comments, the ideas themselves are not difficult to remember. 

The shelves don’t move, for one thing, PeeingPantsSmiles added during a particularly notable episode – the first Live Stream featuring the new, some called “notorious,” camera angle.  Books don’t rearrange themselves.   

Since then, Peter resolved to never allow his condition to impact his quality of life.  

*

Greta scanned Peter’s screen.  Of course she knew the answer.  The game wasn’t known for posing particularly obscure words as answers.  Where he had missed with his vowels?  This all but spelled the answer.  And why guess “z” if he wasn’t thinking—  Well, and Greta considered how best to reply, he probably wasn’t.          

“Muzak?” Greta said, diplomatically. 

“I don’t think it can be a person,” Peter said.

*

Last year Peter monetized Live Stream.  He is doing well.  Merch alone?  He’s now pulling in as much as Rollins Lock (probably more, by the time you read this) and all that guy ever did was make gummy bear pancakes. 

*

Greta stepped from the concourse; she backed against a mesh gate securing a near-empty storefront.  A new store was coming.  Behind the glass, milk-white mannequins, dressed in navy shorts and bright chambray shirts and arranged atop milk-white boxes and elevated cylinders, their heads and appendages sheared at strange angles, stood.  Soft music piped through hidden speakers, the sort of stuff played between holiday seasons.  People walked past, their conversations fractured, arriving as whispers. Were there a point to any of this, Greta could not say. 

She wished she hadn't bothered to look, but this is what people do when people walk away.  Perhaps to find out why.  Or to see what happens next. 

Anyways, Peter hadn't turned around; he was busy with his phone, showing it to another stranger.  The stranger—a young man—was wearing white jeans and a t-shirt, bright as a baby carrot.  He was talking with his hands.  It seemed as though he had a lot to say. 

Greta was holding a plastic bag.  She could not remember where she had been, or what she had purchased.  She decided not to look inside the bag.  That was the easy way out.  Trying to remember?  This would give her something to do on the bus ride home.  There was no excuse.  She should know.  She should never have forgotten. Even though it had, by any metric, been a very long day. 

Greta thought.        

***

Richard writes and teaches outside Ithaca, NY.  A Perry Morgan Fellow from Old Dominion University's MFA program, and recipient of the David Scott Sutelan Memorial Scholarship, his fiction and poetry is featured in numerous publications.  His debut novel, Being Dead, was published fall, 2023, and is available where books are sold.  His novel, DYING MAN IN LIVING ROOM, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions, 2026.  He is @coy_harlingen on Twitter.