‘Just going to the toilet,’ I nodded to Adam and Jack; and stumbled haphazardly towards the general direction of the toilets.

We’d been guzzling some beers on a warm afternoon, and had taken the brave step of selecting one of the gayest bars in Sydney as the location to do so. The only problem with the really gay bars are the toilets.

See, toilets are on the whole are reliable places which meet your urination and defecation needs - and sometimes even a little more. Through the aid of the Western world’s assumption that all women wear dresses, the location of your desired bog is easily locatable.

This, however, is completely turned upside down in the world of the gay bar. If you’re lucky they’ll separate the male toilets from the female; but that doesn’t particularly help, as it’s not uncommon for certain patrons of these bars to misplace their ability to differentiate between the universally accepted Male and Female toilet door symbols.

Then again, said patrons also are known to misplace their ability to determine their own gender, too.

Which was why, upon unzipping to use the urinary tray in what I was incredibly sure were the men’s toilets; I was suddenly on alert when a confused groan creeped out of the cubicle behind me.

Craning over my shoulder, I witnessed vodka in female human form plonked on a toilet seat.

‘Crap, am I in the wrong toilets again?’ she moaned. ‘Faaark.’

‘Um, it’s okay,’ I reassured her. ‘I promise I won’t look.’

She groped at her cubicle door desperately, and I realised with interest that she was actually daintily sipping from a cocktail in the midst of this process.

‘I’ve never actually consumed alcohol and gone for a leak simultaneously,’ I called over my shoulder with an air of curiosity.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned in drunken agony, and made a sound which sounded a very loud version of a pimple being punctured.

‘I just nearly fell in,’ she shrieked. ‘Woe to me, I am in toilet hell.’

Considering that I’m still building on my confidence to use the decidedly more public mode of urination that is the pisstray; she wasn’t helping. I could feel urinpotence coming on.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. ‘Just be quiet for Christ’s sakes. Or talk in a male voice. You’re confusing everyone.’

‘WOE!’ she responded, after a moment’s thought, and dropped her cocktail glass. It tinkled along the ground and rolled underneath the cubicle door, leaving a curiously blue trail of liquid behind it.

‘I think I’ve been drinking Windex,’ she sighed loudly. ‘I am going to kill the barman, and oh God, I’m still halfway into the toilet.’

This was the point when another guy entered the toilets and began using the pisstray as well. I quickly attempted to perform a series of helpful facial expressions to communicate the presence of a female in the proximity.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter what facial expressions you conduct in a gay hotel’s toilets - they all translate to ‘Please grope me roughly and gargle my testicles in your mouth’. The man shot me an offended look, but this was of little concern; because the fact that the female had now left her cubicle without pulling her pants up was far more offensive.

The concept of a female watching me urinate caused my penis to shrink, retract, shrivel, and other words which I’m now just realising I shouldn’t associate with my genitalia. Her pantless presence was as unexpectedly as a blonde hairdo with a terrifying ‘artistic’ black streak at the back.

Actually, she did have a blonde hairdo with a black streak at the back. This wasn’t helping at all.

‘Well,’ she pouted with her hands on her hips. ‘At least you’re both of identifiable gender.’ With this she smacked us both on her arse, and I began praying silently to the grimy tiles in front of me that she’d put her pants back on. Otherwise, this could be classed as foreplay.

With that she rumbled out of the toilets, but returned thirty seconds later with a friend to peer in at the door and giggle titteringly.

‘Woe to me,’ I corrected. ‘For I am in toilet hell.’ And there I stood with another incredibly confused male, as we both stood there in a state of terrified urination.

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