David Sedaris
I've always liked the idea of accessories. It was my search for something discreet, masculine, and practical that led me to the Stadium Pal, an external catheter currently being marketed to sports fans, truck drivers, and anyone else who's tired of searching for a bathroom.
At first inspection, the device met all my criteria. Was it masculine? Yes, and proudly so. Unlike a regular catheter, which is inserted directly into the penis, the Stadium Pal connects by way of a self-adhesive condom, which is then attached to a flexible rubber tube.
Urine flows through the tube and collects in the Freedom leg bag conveniently attached to the user's calf. The bag can be emptied and reused up to 12 times, making it both disgusting and cost-effective. And what could be manlier?
Was it discreet? According to the brochure, unless you wore it with shorts no one needed to know a thing about it.
Was it practical? At the time, yes. I don't drive or attend football games, but I did have a book tour coming up, and the possibilities were endless. Five glasses of iced tea followed by a long public reading? Thanks, Stadium Pal. The window seat on an overbooked cross-country flight? Don't mind if I do.
I ordered myself a Stadium Pal and realized that while it might make sense in a hospital, it really wasn't very practical for day to day use. In an open air sporting arena, a piping hot 32-ounce bag of urine might go unnoticed. But not so in a stuffy airplane or a small, crowded bookstore. An hour after christening it, mine smelled like a nursing home.
On top of that, I found that it was hard to pee and do other things at the same time. Reading out loud, discussing my dinner options with a flight attendant, checking into a fine hotel, each activity required its own separate form of concentration. And while no one knew exactly what I was up to, it was pretty clear that something was going on.
I think it was my face that gave me away. That and my oddly swollen calf.
What ultimately did me in was the self-adhesive condom. Putting it on was no problem. But its removal qualified as what, in certain cultures, is known as a bris.
Wear it once and you'll need a solid month in order to fully recover. It will likely be a month in which you'll weigh the relative freedom of peeing in your pants against the unsightly discomfort of a scab-covered penis.
Peed in her pants.... said it was almost an hour before she was told she could go but she said it was too late...
