Pissing Like a Real Man

When I was younger gender was never something pushed on me. My parents both lived in Berkeley in the hippy days and therefore believe in giving their children freedom to express themselves without the strain of societal norms, such as gender. If I wanted to wear a hot-pink ski jacket when I was five, which I did, they were okay with it and never said that it was feminine or that boys weren’t supposed to wear those clothes. I cannot think of being instructed by my parents at any time in my youth to do an activity or action a certain way because “that’s how men are supposed to do it.” Now that I said that I can actually think of one. I remember a distinct time when I was three years old and was taking a piss in a public restroom with my dad. We were both at our respective urinals and we began our motions. I unbuttoned my jean-shorts, unzipped the fly, and pulled them down along with my tighty-whities, letting them sit on the floor right around my ankles. My dad looked over at me from the neighboring urinal and saw my bare ass and decided it was time to teach me a lesson on how to pee. He explained to me that when you need to go, you don’t have to let your pants go around your ankles, you can actually just unzip them and keep them around your waist. From that day on I’ve been pissing like a real man.