The facility that houses ‘The World’s First Splashless Urinal’ is massive and its acreage is uneasy. The air around it buzzes with chemical drought and flies. Hector and I pass several small clouds of insects, in fact, each in a structurally uncomfortable swarm. We pass trees that grow with fractal corners. Birds that hop in tight circles. The world leans into the urinal complex in a way that makes the shallow slope up to the parking lot feel precipitously like a downward fall.
As is the case with all self-service Wayside attractions, I am both relieved and intimidated by its vacancy. Hector and I enter through a sliding glass door and struggle to keep our feet on the tile inside.
‘It is at great expense that the world has solved the splashy urinal problem, in concept if not in practice. ‘The World’s First Splashless Urinal’ began as a bit of an academic joke- a throwaway scholarship sponsored by nearby universities that encouraged emerging STEM freshman to consider the myriad variables necessary for creating a urinal: fluid dynamics, diversity of audience, resource efficiency, and aesthetics. The results were rarely as interesting as judges hoped, normally a series of overdesigned porcelain bowls, most of which were indistinguishable from the common commode.
Amy Montero, a student of astrophysics, is credited as producing the entry that changed the purpose of the scholarship. Her design required a series of engines working in tandem to create a vacuum. A sensor at its base would detect the arrival of a urinator and breach the vacuum so that anything, ideally urine, driven past a certain point on the floor would be forcibly pulled into the tank. The vacuum urinal was loud and violent. It tore through a mannequin during a demonstration. It crushed a judge’s hand. The vacuum urinal did not win Amy the scholarship, but it did draw the attention of a massively wealthy anonymous patron who, academic legend has it, agreed to provide her the staffing and equipment needed to perfect the same design.
‘The World’s First Splashless Urinal’ debuted just a decade later, much to the consternation of Bremsford County officials who had been led to believe it would be a water park. Crowds arrived en masse but long lines and sensations of vertigo soon repulsed would-be visitors. Bremsford County refuses to acknowledge the site with signage and the shadowy bureaucracy that claims the facility has rebuffed attempts to have it torn down.
Stakeouts have noted the annual appearance of a sleek, white limo and a man with graying hair. He emerges from ‘The World’s First Splashless Urinal’ with the ugly self-satisfaction of the obscenely rich and the careful trot of a full bladder.’
I expect to get lost in the facility, to be led down a series of winding hallways and urinal themed hurdles. In reality, the outer door opens upon a small, sterile lobby and a second, inner door opens upon the urinal and the sink. The inside of the facility is completely silent- more than completely. As I stoop to comfort Hector, I realize that sound is fleeting and that it curves toward the urinal, that the urinal, which is only a dark oval in the wall, is tugging everything toward it.
There are no warning signs. No instructions for use. There are no levers, in fact, no noteworthy plumbing. The bathroom air is soft and sterile. The grout is clean. There is a dispenser for gum, condoms, and disposable toothbrushes. A toilet paper roll hangs empty on the wall.
There is no chance for anything to splash. Like Montero’s vacuum model, anything near enough the urinal is simple pulled into it and lost to the terrestrial earth. I wouldn’t know how to guess at the thing’s inner workings. There is something deadly about it- a sense of radioactivity, but also of the opposite. That nearness to the urinal is vitally draining, somehow.
It’s difficult to leave. It takes an hour to just to make it back to the motorcycle. I’m not sure where the time has gone but I am exhausted. Hector curls in the back of the kennel and is asleep before I secure him to the bike, heart thudding slowly beneath his leather.
-traveler
