A new craze is sweeping the nation.
I’m talking about dabbing the end of your penis with a piece of toilet paper after a wee. Oh yes, it’s very much in vogue.
It may surprise the ladyreaders of this diary, who have probably always dabbed their ladyparts routinely after passing a ladypiss, to hear that this is a new phenomenon.
All these years, you ladies have been giving oral sex to literally millions of men while having tiny particles of urine passing across your lips unsolicited. (Still, I suppose that’s the least of your worries).
No. Historically, we just shake a few token drips off and put it away. Hence the old addage:
You can shake and you can dance but the last two drops go in your pants.
In hindsight, however, it is hard to believe we did this for so long. What beasts! Did our grandfathers get impaled in the war so we could behave so ferociously? Did Jesus die for this?
At a party recently, the topic of willy-cleaning came up.
“Oh yes,” said a fashionable toff, “I always make sure I wipe the end of my slow worm ruthlessly after passing water”.
He wouldn’t have it any other way. When another bloke confessed to never having cleaned his penis after a wee in his whole life, the toff pulled a recoiling grimace:
“Never dab your person? Oh my!”
Dissatisfied, he produced a silk handkerchief and polished the lint from his monocle.
Your humble narrator jumps in at this point. I mention that willy-dabbing surely cannot be the standard. The absence of toilet roll dispensers next to urinals is testament to this. Quod erat demonstrandum, chump.
Nonetheless, I have been doing the modern thing of late by indulging in the dab. I find it largely agreeable.
The only problem is of how to detach the sheet of toilet paper from the roll (essentially a job requiring double dexterity) while holding your fireman in the other (also a job requiring two hands – for some of us anyway.)
I suppose you could just let go of your willy in order to acquire the toilet paper but then you run the risk dripping. Which would be terrible.
The best method, of course, is to take yet another leaf from the ladies’ book of pissing tips and just sit down to pee.
Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm is an advocate of sitting. He likes to read the New York Times on the toilet. “While you’re pissing all over your shoes, I’m learning something!” He has a point.
Sitting is really the ultimate in toilet behaviour. You can be king of the bathroom on your Armatage throne. You can indeed read. You can stare out of the window idly. You can even do an unprecedented poo. Everyone’s a winner.
I’m thinking of investing in one of those fluffy pink toilet seat covers that your grandma uses to maximize the comfort, though I’m not sure I’d ever leave the bathroom if I had one of those. I’d just sit there all day reading magazines and doing tiny micro-wees.
It’s also terribly humbling. Removed of all pretense, you’re reduced to being a defecating biological construct sitting on the open end of a sewer. It’s humbling in a similar way to a trip to the Vatican. I’m not saying that craning your neck in the Sistine Chapel is a similar experience to having a wee but it’s food for thought.
On the subject of food, there’s something wrong about the presence of food in the bathroom isn’t there? I suppose you could maximize the fun of sitting-to-wee by keeping a bowl of mixed nuts atop of the cistern. But there’s something so un-fung-shui about that it doesn’t bare thinking about. Food in the bathroom indeed. You wouldn’t have a shave in your kitchen.
Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Toilet etiquette. Always remember to dab, gentlemen. For the good of your country. And for Jesus.