Roadside Rebellion

[SoakdBrute]

Thanks for the praise, I'm glad people have been enjoying it so far!

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Part 4: The Dessert

Some of the dietary advice that Dr. Harris had given John to reduce his urinary urgency, he was already following. In an effort to cut down his blood pressure, he had lowered his coffee consumption to just one cup a day, under Dr. Schmidt's advice. Other advice, he could stand to implement anyway. John was surprised to learn that one side effect of snacking on empty carbs, aside from the immediate effect on his blood sugar, was more frequent urination. He started eating more protein, less white bread and starches. With time, the maximum of 3 toilet visits no longer posed the same challenge as it once did, regardless of his water intake. Where he occasionally found himself roused from a deep slumber by the need to go to the toilet, he no longer experienced that at all, instead bounding out of bed in the morning to relieve a full bladder as the sun rose through his bathroom window.

It was now May, and the lukewarm breezes of spring were starting to give way to cloudless days of sunshine, through damp and occasionally muggy afternoons. John continued taking his beta blockers, continued hydrating, and continued bracing himself against the urge to piss, now with less conscious effort than before. When it was time for his midday bathroom break at the office men's room, or his evening one at home, he would stand there urinating for up to 2 minutes at a time, surprised at how much he was holding even though he didn't think he had to go that badly. The familiar reek of the parking-garage toilets, which was getting stronger with the early summer heat, no longer caused him to set off towards the urinals out of habit, simply registering along with the exhaust fumes and concrete smell as he unlocked his car door and got in. Some associations were harder for John to break. In his backyard, pointing the garden hose at the tall grass out back with his other hand on his hip as he sprayed ice-cold water that shook the blades of grass with their pressure, John got a sympathetic twinge in his bladder that caused him to purse his lips. Yet he refrained from relieving himself in the bushes, eager to avoid another extra notch in his daily tally, and another browbreating from Dr. Harris.

As he went about the lawn care, denying himself the quick pee break he once took for granted, he looked around at the surrounding homes, their windows facing out from second and third stories, with sightlines into his backyard, however distant. He wondered if they could see, or if they'd ever looked. John reasoned that he likely would have been invisible from the front or the side, to most of his neighbors. But they might have seen him cutting a hasty path to the back fence, then return inside. Maybe his next-door neighbor had even heard him ... John's thoughts trailed off as he wrapped up his yard work, put away the hose, and went inside to use the facilities.

Other dietary stipulation were harder for John to adhere to. Citrus and tomatoes were ingredients he found difficult to eliminate entirely. And as a love of all things spicy, cutting them from his diet was out of the question. John's primary contribution to the home pantry was a collection of hot sauces in various flavors and heat levels, to the occasional eye-rolling of his wife Angie. It seemed there was no cuisine on the planet, Eastern or Western, homemade or delivery, for which John couldn't pair some sort of hot sauce, ritually sprinkling it with several shakes from a carefully chosen bottle before eating. His satisfaction as he relished the condiment's heat, his face contorting from the sting, occasionally bordered on masochistic. And though he didn't have a big sweet tooth, it was hard for him to believe that chocolate could really be irritating his bladder that badly.

One day, John emerged from a meeting with a major client at a quarter past 3pm when he saw his colleagues standing around a side table, holding disposable plastic plates and chatting casually. He approached them and saw that they were eating a rich German chocolate cake, two moist layers joined and coated with a creamy icing laden with coconut shavings.

"You gotta try this," Miguel implored John.

"Oh, no thanks, guys. Big lunch," John said, patting his stomach.

Chris smirked at him dubiously. "He's watchin' his figure."

"Heeeere we go."

"You're the closest thing to an Ironman we've got around here!" Miguel spoke between bites, scooping up some errant frosting with a fork. "C'mon, a slice won't kill ya. You're as fit as the next guy."

"Is that what you want, huh? For me to get as chubby as you?" Miguel rolled his eyes at John's comeback.

John nevertheless looked at the cake, which one of the staff members from HR had brought in. It was tempting, and though John had in fact eaten a big lunch, the mental exertion of talking through the construction plan with his client earlier had proven more taxing than expected. As he regarded the stray crumbs that lay in the gap left by the slices eaten already, John's stomach growled.

"Lay off 'im, man," Chris cut in. "I know why he's holdin' back. Must be afraid it'll give 'im a leaky faucet," he muttered in a low voice, licking icing off a plastic fork.

"Huh?" Miguel turned to John. "What does he mean, 'leaky faucet'?"

John froze. What had been a matter of casual conversation for Chris, a man nearly a decade his senior who had been forced to confront a bothersome prostate, seeking several rounds of medical advice and weighing his options until it had become a subject as quotidian as the weather or their town baseball team's progress to the World Series, was still something John regarded as a temporary affliction, something that just called for a quick medical tune-up, and a little grit on his part. He wasn't prepared, as John was, for it to drift into the rotation for his office's water-cooler chat.

"John?"

As he remained at a loss for words, he glanced back down at the cake. Before he knew it, he had served himself a slice. Facing his colleagues again, he shoveled a large bite into his mouth, savoring it theatrically as he gazed at Chris.

It was perfection. The crunch of the coconut shavings against the cake, the rich dairy taste of buttercream against the bitter dark chocolate notes, were a delectable match.

"I dunno what he's talkin' about." John finally said, his speech muffled through bites of the cake. Chris raised his eyebrows at John's denial. "What're you lookin' at me for? That slice was half as big as yours, tops. Better double up on the saw palmetto." In nearly as long as it had taken him to serve himself, John finished wolfing down his slice.

As he returned to his desk, he guzzled an entire bottle's worth of water to chase down the flavor of the rich dessert. Setting the bottle back down as he slaked his thirst, he sighed and returned to his workday.

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John was saving his files and putting away his belongings as he prepared to leave the office for the day. Despite feeling at ease with the pace of his job that afternoon, he had been tapping his right foot for nearly half an hour as he wrapped up. He got up, grabbed the backpack with his belongings and headed for the elevator bank.

As he crossed the threshold into the hallway, he paused, clenching his sphincter as a feeling of surprise struck him. So soon? For the last few weeks, the journey from his office back home, which had posed such a challenge for him earlier on during his bladder training, had nearly become an afterthought. Pondering absent-mindedly why his bladder was calling for a break now, he remembered the cake, and the water he had drunk to chase it down with. He now turned towards the men's room, deliberating with himself.

John snapped out of it as Chris emerged into the hallway, heading to the men's room before his own commute. He paused and turned to John.

"You goin', too?"

"No — uhh... — n-nah, I'm good, man."

"All right," Chris said as he resumed walking. "See ya later."

"G'night." John was smiling back, but feeling foolish for passing up a chance to go to the bathroom when he could use one. He thought about Dr. Harris, and the logbook, shaking his head as he marched over to the elevator with a deep sigh. He was doing so well. Knowing Dr. Harris, if he went one notch over the limit now, it would be like the three weeks prior may as well have never happened. I'll try not to think about it, John bargained with himself, and if I really gotta go then there'll be somewhere along the way. He was now exiting the elevator bank and walking over to the parking garage.

He was parked on the third level that day, and as he walked from the flight of stairs out onto the concrete, he noticed a man standing beside an SUV with three other passengers in it. John caught snippets of dialogue in a teasing, puckish tone of voice. The man speaking had stuck his head out from the passenger-side window, sporting a pair of visor sunglasses and a dirty-blonde goatee.

"There's bathrooms right here in the garage, dude," he said, between bouts of high-pitched laughter. His speech was slightly slurred.

"They're fuckin' out of order," John heard the other guy say. He was now passing behind the SUV on the way to his own vehicle. He noticed him facing the low wall separating the parking area from the opposite stairwell, which he was splashing with a beery stream of urine that began to puddle in front of his feet. Seven beers deep, he carried away chatting with the designated driver, moaning softly with relief during a lull in the conversation. He was too drunk to be self-conscious, his spent beer splattering against the concrete with an echo that rang thinly across the parking-garage floor. John thought he noticed the man smiling.

Turning his face away from them to avoid catching their attention, he grit his teeth against the sympathetic urge which the sight of that drunk man's stream had given him, clenching the muscles in his nether regions. The two young men's chatter, idle and frivolous from an afternoon at the bars, faded back out of earshot as John finally approached his vehicle.

It was then that John got a clear view of the garage toilets. That stranger urinating by the SUV was right: the door to the men's toilet, normally propped open during these hours as a cone of fluorescent lighting fell through the doorway, was instead shut, the doorframe sealed off with yellow barricade tape which read, "CAUTION."

John got in his vehicle and started the ignition. As he sat, he could feel that early fullness in the tank at the base of his pelvis. Just gotta remember to work the pelvic floor, he reassured himself with a sigh. No sweat. Despite his positive self-talk, a light sheen was already beginning to form at the nape of his neck, warmed twice over from the muggy evening air and the hothouse warmth of the parking garage. Steeling himself, he drove from the garage out into rush-hour traffic.

The drive from the mixed-use neighborhood where John's office was, out onto the expressway that connected him to the suburbs, was usually a leading indicator of how he could expect traffic on the expressway to look. That afternoon, John thought that it seemed slower than usual, and was unsure why. Sitting now in the driver's seat, John started to squirm a little, then pressed his thighs together and breathed out. Somebody must be double-parked a few blocks away or something, he reasoned. It'll let up once I get out on the expressway.

Fifteen minutes later, he turned onto the expressway and looked out through the front windshield. What he saw caused him to gulp with anxiety: Bumper-to-bumper traffic, moving at a slow crawl on all four lanes. What the fuck? John turned on the radio for the evening news, waiting patiently for the traffic report to come on as he searched the road stretching in front of him for anything that could be causing the delay.

"... We're seeing some major slowdowns on the I-64 tonight, with traffic backed up for miles due to a combination of accidents and ongoing construction. If you're heading out, be sure to pack your patience because you're going to need it. Stay tuned for updates throughout the evening. Now, let's toss it over to Devon for a look at weather conditions affecting your commute ..."

Shit! John had hoped that the immediate state of traffic that he had encountered would be a passing phenomenon, but the traffic report he just heard decisively ruled that out. His pulse quickened slightly, his heartbeat faintly audible in his ears for a passing moment. After hearing the news, John felt that he was on the verge of having an accident of his own. Dismissing the thought with a furrow of his brow and a firm shake of his head, John took a deep breath and sat up straight. I don't need to piss yet. Just nerves.The acute twinge of his bladder passed, and John's focus returned to assessing the traffic that stretched before him.

Where past surges of unexpected urinary need had hit John during less complicated drives home, the touch-and-go pace of traffic that evening required him to remain attentive, watching for his turn to let up on the gas pedal or else press down, making two or three feet's progress at a time. He sat upright, enlisting the best posture he could manage in order to take any undue pressure off his lower back and pelvis. And he clenched the muscles at his taint periodically, pulses of restraint directing the message back up through his sphincter, and along the richly innervated flesh and muscle of his supple, productive waterworks: Not yet. Not here.

Seconds felt like minutes, and minutes like hours. Over time, and far quicker than John expected, the early fullness in his bladder, merely recommending a quick break to change the fluids, escalated into a distended water-balloon sensation. He was no longer pumping himself shut with his pelvic muscles, but engaging them constantly. Twenty minutes into a stretch of his commute that usually only took half an hour, but hardly a third of the way along, he had reached the limit of all medical advice for men in his situation. What was there for medicine to tell him, anyway, about the simmering fight with his own anatomy that he didn't already know? This wasn't John's first drive, as a passenger or a motorist, through unrelenting traffic, when the urge to pee suddenly reared its head at the least convenient possible time. Long experience had given him the instruction in holding back the flow that no urologist, however skilled, possibly could. Just gotta hold it. He drummed at the steering wheel with the fingers of right hand, bobbing up and down every few minutes in his vinyl car seat.

He looked around through the car windows. Four lanes, stop-and-go traffic in every one of them. SUV's and sedans for the most part, with the occasional truck here or there. Seeing that there was no way out of his predicament, that he was now fully committed to making it through that stretch of motorway dry, gave him a momentary flash of anxiety that caused him to cross his right knee slightly against his left. Damn it ... His mind started to scan backwards through his day in some search of an explanation for his dire state, a distraction from the urinary torture of a filling bladder with no place to relieve it. He still doubted whether a slice of chocolate cake could have been responsible for setting off such an urgent state of need, but the water he washed it down with ... I shoulda gone in the parking lot when I had the chance, he found himself thinking, albeit skeptically. He bobbed up and down quickly a few times, stabilizing himself against the urge to void that the memory had given him. No, he decided, dismissing the idea almost as soon as it had come to him, shaking his head. He would have hated to risk one of his coworkers seeing him urinate in public, even if it was just his back turned to them. Anyway, he barely had to pee an hour ago, so it hadn't even occurred to him to go. Most of all, he dreaded the possibility of having to explain himself to Dr. Harris. He didn't have it in him to lie to people, especially not to a medical professional. The upshot was that his bladder-training log effectively served as a record of every time he had interrupted his day to urinate, with the manner, place and time of each one available to his urologist upon request. Under the circumstances, the last thing he wanted was to risk a tongue-lashing for taking a leak beside the fender of his car.

John was now a bundle of stressed nerves and taut muscle from the waist down, his thick thighs pressed together in an all-out effort to stem the tide. The one silver lining in the situation was that his snail's pace down the expressway barely required him to steer. John took the opportunity to remove his left hand from the steering wheel, bringing it down to his crotch as he gulped once more and squeezed himself through his light-blue jeans, his thumb and index finger pinching shut the head of his member as he bore down with the heel of his hand. John's cheeks puffed out as he exhaled, leaning into the gesture of self-containment. Now was not a time for him to be proud.

At last the gridlock seemed to abate, with John employing the gas pedal in longer and longer stretches of vehicular progress. The need that had been steadily rising behind his loins had reached a steady state, like a dull firmness which John could manage without using his hands to squeeze himself. With a cautious optimism, he redirected his focus to cruising carefully down the rest of the expressway and back to the roads of his suburban town, which he reached as he regained a moderate rate of speed. Hopeful that he would avoid soaking the driver-side seat of his car that day, his mind still wandered at every red light home, drifting back inexorably to the bind that his bladder training had placed him in. The whole point of this was for me to get back some control, but this last month I've come closer to pissin' myself than I ever have in my life ... He saw other commuters in front of him, wending their own solitary way back to their own homes, single or with others awaiting them, or else to evening shifts at other workplaces. Were there other men out there like him, he wondered, other grown men seemingly normal and fit from the outside, yet learning all over again the self-control that most adults took for granted?

Who else out there was dedicating themselves, whether for medical reasons or simply due to poor planning and forgetfulness, to navigating vast paved stretches of road, nearly bereft of nature but for the occasional strip of greenery off to the sides, passing themselves off as confident and in control while fighting back the urge to piss like a racehorse, the organ tucked away at the seat of their manhood no longer an appendage at rest, but an object of suspicion, an errant squirt gun threatening to go off and give them away as a hairless ape, a warm-blooded creature pushed past the brink to overflowing?

At last, after what had felt like an eternity, the street where he lived. A right turn onto the two-lane road, one last squeeze of his thighs together to tide him over during the home stretch. Five blocks to go, a constant bobbing up and down in his seat as John relied on muscle memory to complete his drive home, the better to ease up on his taxed nervous system. He slowed further as he approach the block of his own residence, turning on to the garage next to his house as he came to a rest, exhaling sharply as he got out of the vehicle. He had to keep up the firm clench through his core and pelvic muscles to the very end, lest he piss himself just paces away from home. No way I'd ever explain that to the wife, he thought ruefully as he shut the car door and started walking to the front door. Dammit, he paused before unlocking it, suddenly in need of a firm squeeze as he grabbed himself with his right hand and held it there. Given that John had arrived later than usual, Angie would probably be showering right around now. He didn't want to knock on her bathroom door. No way he could let her see him like this. And no way he was making it up the stairs to his own toilet without risking a spurt into his briefs.

With a sigh, he put his keys back in his pocket, and carried out Plan B. He marched over to the other side of the house, opposite the garage, and past Angie's prized blooms, for decorative use only. John's breathing was quick as he jogged past the set of lawn furniture and turned into the private alley which the back of the house formed with the bushy fence closing off their property. John reached the corner where his shed stood and, turning to face a patch of tall grass, stopped jogging, hopping back and forth now from one foot to the other. Dr. Harris can kiss my ass, he thought, unbuckling his belt. I'm pissin' in my backyard tonight.

As he unzipped, nearly about to relieve himself, one of the windows from the next-door property caught his eye, and he stopped. He was still shuffling about on the spot, his brow furrowed from hesitation. The blurry light which shone through the drawn curtains shifted in brightness and hue, a flux of colors radiating from a television broadcast. In that moment, like never before, John was aware of having neighbors. In short order, the implication followed, and John became aware also of having spectators.

Fuck! He stepped away from the tall grass and stomped over to the shed, on the verge of pissing himself right in the one place where he had always felt eager to relieve himself for so long. He held up his jeans with both hands, which now drooped slightly in his partial state of undress. Flinging open the shed door, John searched his shed for a receptacle in the low evening light. Among several, an aluminum bucket with just an inch of potting soil left in it stood out. John picked it up and hastily pitched its contents back out through the shed's doorway, before stepping back inside and setting it down in front of him. I'll deal with that later ... His back was now turned against the alley, John facing into the shed's darkness, the sum of his focus and his pained anticipation resting on the vessel at his feet, which was still flecked with specks of dirt.

Planting his right then his left foot, John assumed the stance. He whipped himself out through the fly in his briefs and, in the very final instant of self-control before his sphincter yielded, confirmed his aim. In short order, John would add another notch to his tally for the day.

Ahhhhh ... John sighed helplessly, his piss ringing against the side of the bucket. He was holding himself with both hands, staring straight down at the pool of fluid he was now voiding from his overstretched bladder. His shoulders were heaving now in deep breaths of relief, though his breath still burned somewhat in his chest from the exertion of John's race to the finish line. The brassy rattle of his piss as it landed in the empty bucket gradually mellowed to a rumble, his stream now striking a deepening body of fluid. With his left hand on his hip, John continued aiming with his right, his bladder deflating as he filled the bucket with a sound that fell in pitch. His head was empty, no thoughts at all as he tended to his need, surrounded by equipment and bags of gardening supplies as he stood in the middle of his shed. At last his stream thinned out and lost its urgency, John helping it along with pulses of muscular contraction from his crotch that spurted the last drops from his bladder. As they hit the bucket of hot, briny fluid, drops splashed out on the ground nearby, John missing the bucket altogether once or twice.

When John was sure he had drained himself completely, he shook off and zipped up, tucking his shirt back in his jeans before pausing to collect himself in the cover of the shed. With the back of his forearm, he wiped away the sweat from his brow, hoping to erase any sign of the struggle he had fought making it home that evening. When he was as certain as possible, without enough light or a mirror to look in, that he once again appeared unrattled, he bent over to grab the bucket, which he carefully removed from the floor with both hands, before setting it down outside the shed and kicking it over with the tip of his right foot. The volume of fluid that John had spent the better part of his commute home straining to hold back inside him, trickling relentlessly down the ureters on either side of the small of his back, testing his bladder control drop by drop, now flowed away passively into the dirt, drowning the parched soil which went dark with moisture as it made contact with the urine. After most of it had spilled out, John engaged the heel of his foot in order to turn the bucket over fully, resting it upside-down in the damp patch of soil before walking back out the alley and through the front door to his home.

That night, John drifted off to sleep uneasily.

[SoakdBrute]

You're managing to pack every male bladder issue into your writing, certainly every one that I have ever thought of and more that I haven't besides. It's wonderful.

If I ever visit a urologist, I think I'll avoid Dr. Harris though. Not the over-sympathetic type, is he?

I was wondering if that would get across In my head, Dr. Schmidt is meant to be more of a "man's man" at heart, somebody who takes his work seriously but is still down-to-earth and not above a well-meaning joke now and again, at least with patients that he knows well. Dr. Harris, on the other hand ... I think any of us who've interacted with medical professionals long enough have encountered a Dr. Harris at least once, and it's not a pleasant experience by any means.

[Brian]

I was wondering if that would get across In my head, Dr. Schmidt is meant to be more of a "man's man" at heart, somebody who takes his work seriously but is still down-to-earth and not above a well-meaning joke now and again, at least with patients that he knows well. Dr. Harris, on the other hand ... I think any of us who've interacted with medical professionals long enough have encountered a Dr. Harris at least once, and it's not a pleasant experience by any means.

I wonder what Dr. Harris will have to say about the saga in part 4 then. Was this a success story or an abject failure? Depends on how we look at it.

Magnificent physical and psychological descriptions of John's desperate journey home here. Thanks for another gripping read.

[Fred]

John should be impressed with how long he was able to hold it in. I was! I was squirming all the way to him finding the bucket.

If Dr. Harris is featured in a subsequent chapter, I wonder how good his control really is.