Taking a piss in the street

Who amongst us hasn't been caught short when outdoors - when you gotta piss, you gotta piss, right? Besides, your mum always told you it was dangerous to hold it in. Normally, when this situation arises, you find a relatively safe spot and point the boyo at a vertical surface: walls, trees, fences, the homeless, etc. (never could figure out why it has to be against something when you're standing outside, unless you're drunk). But what's going on in the minds of those who just take a slash when the notion takes them, regardless of the surroundings?

I was out early this morning and encountered some bloke (looked like Mr Average on his way to work) pissing into the gutter of a fairly busy street. He obviously didn't give a shit that there were others passing by, and had chosen to 'free piss' rather than use a vertical prop. He had also ignored a perfectly good alleyway only metres away which, in itself, flies in the face of convention - looking for that suitable spot is the best part of public urination. It's almost like we can't earn the right to do it until we've scouted the territory beforehand.

In the neighbourhood where we live, something else occurs which proves that we haven't evolved too much from the time we used to swing through trees, slinging shit at each other. There's a long section of wall which is a favourite pissing post for passing drivers and pedestrians alike. It doesn't half pen and ink when the sun gets up, but the stench only seems to act as a magnet in drawing more people to it.

Having just had a butchers at Google, it would appear that the whole outdoor pissing thing isn't just limited to us men. If you search, Pissing in Public, it throws up more than 15 million results... 15 fucking million, and a lot of these refer to the fairer sex. Still, the average bloke doesn't have to suffer the ignominy of the squat.