If you listen to Howard Stern you’ve heard his many painully honest admissions. The most striking to me is his admission that he can’t pee in a public bathroom. He has a phobia of peeing in public.
He self-deprecatingly attributes it to shame over his 4-inch penis (an exaggeration, I think). But little does he know that its actually a common problem. He’s told whole sagas how his night out at the NY Nicks game or theater have been ruined by not being able to pee, and having to get driven home in a rush to pee in privacy.
Paruresis is a recognized social anxiety disorder that makes men (mostly) and women fearful of peeing in front of people. Its what makes spouses close and lock the bathroom door in their own homes for privacy, and what drives men into the stalls of public restrooms to pee anonymously.
I’ve had this problem since puberty. I remember reading an Isaac Asimov book in middle school that featured a man visiting a far-off planet that had the strange and horrifying custom of public bathrooms, with urinals open to the entire room! Asimov used this fictional device to work out his own Paruresis I’m sure.
Anyway – my theory is that this stage fright is actually an evolutionary defence mechanism, and that those of us guys who have it would actually be naturally selected to procreate and succeed biologically.
Think of it – how can any half-way cautious man be expected to drop trousers, turn his back on other men, and relax his prostate enough to let the pee out? We’d have been eaten by the boars and lions in the old old country.
Anyway – I hope my admission helps some guys lose the shame.