Urinal Etiquette

What’s that, ladies? An oxymoron, you say? Not a bit of it: just as exquisite tendrils of bathroom mould can flare up violently behind sodden towel rails, unexpectedly intricate social mores can bloom in the most inhospitable of places.
So it goes with urinal etiquette.
While having a Monday night drink with a friend at a cosy Fitzroy pub, the more delicate branch of my excretory system reached its endgame. Now, a striking fact, of which few women are aware, is the strange effects that ‘personalised’ urinals (a.k.a. ‘horizontal basins’, if you will) have over the communal, stainless-steel variety (a.k.a. ‘hog troughs’, whether you will or no). I will try and explain this concept to you as clearly as I’m able, using my own experience as a template.
On entering the men’s room, I was forced to wait for one of the three uri-cubicles (i.e. a personalised, wall-mounted urinal – ‘uri-cubicle’ is my second, preferred coinage for this heinous invention, the formal name of which escapes me).
The first person to finish was the occupant of the middle uri-cubicle. (I hope you are paying attention: you may think this detail is insignificant, but you would be dead wrong.)
Thus begins the first impossible trial of The Soon-To-Be-Urinating Man: i.e. to discreetly position himself between two currently urinating men while not seeming intrusive. A hard task at the best of times, this is made infinitely more so when dealing with Uri-Cubicals. (This effect has something to do, I think, with the fact that each man’s Uri-Cubicle effectively becomes his ‘private property’ when in use, while Hog Troughs derive from a more Marxian tradition. But I digress).
On moving into the middle position, the two men flanking me moved slightly, grudgingly sideways, crablike, as you would if a new, hostile urinator in town – The Urinator With No Name, if you will – had positioned himself between you and your buddy.
Things continued quite uneventfully for a few seconds. (A blessing. No news is good news at this particular time).
And then problem #2 arrived. (It gets a little complicated here, so please pay attention – it may help if you draw a (tasteful) diagram for your own reference.)
If the middle urinator arrives at the uri-cubicle after the left and right urinators, they will of course tend to finish before he does.
But the ‘changing of the guard’ ritual forces the urinator-intruder to commit a second imposition even worse than the first.
For if one of the outermost urinators leaves his uri-cubicle before the other (which is usually the case, unless the two outermost urinators are perfectly synchronised, which is unlikely.), the two remaining urinators – the newcomer-intruder in the middle and the remaining veteran on the edge – find themselves in sudden, unwelcome proximity. (The distance between them of course remains the same, but it feels closer, due to the loss of the counterbalancing force of the recently-departed outer urinator. That’s relativity – although I forget whether it is the Special or General theory).
Anyhow, who is blamed for this situation? Why, the urinator-intruder, naturally – even if his motives be as pure as the driven (yellow) snow!
But, I hear you say, surely there is a way out of this impasse. Yet state your case, and I will refute it.
There is, of course, no chance of either one of the unwillingly adjacent urinators relocating to the outermost uri-cubicle at this late point of the game:
As for the middle urinator, a hasty relocation is deeply suspicious – possibly disastrous, if the execution is bungled.
For the rightmost urinator, relocation is logically impossible, as he already occupies an outer position in the uri-cubicle complex: how would it benefit him to move around the central urinator?
The intruder, on committing his second faux-pas by no fault of his own, is falsely viewed as the willing cause of this awkwardness.
Finally, bladder capacities being equal, the remaining of the two initial urinators eventually leaves his post.
But the final – and most egregious – indignity suffered by the middle urinator-intruder has yet to occur. For remember: both outermost urinals are now vacant.

The following scenario commonly ensues. Two friends, both soon-to-be urinators themselves, enter the room. In a perfect world, they would each take up an outermost uri-cubicle, leaving the middle uri-cubicle vacant. (A vacant middle urinal makes conversation between men possible by minimizing genital proximity).
But of course, the initial urinator still occupies the middle uri-cubicle. His presence beside the two usurpers, brief though it is destined to be, achieves three things, all undesirable from his perspective:

i. It cuts off the possibility of conversation between the two friends, again causing the middle urinator to become the (hopefully figurative) target of resentment on both sides.

ii. It introduces an element of unanticipated genital proximity that strains the jovial, yet emotionally remote, atmosphere that is essential for a thriving uri-cubicle atmosphere.

iii. It forces our protagonist, the middle urinator, to perform a delicate ‘reversing’ movement in order to extricate himself from the middle position without committing an unnecessarily exhibitionistic ‘swivel’ manoeuvre.

(N.B. It is important to remember that our hero is no longer a urinator-intruder in relation to the two newcomers. It is they who are the urinator-intruders; although in the bitterest injustice of the whole experience, it is he who is treated as such.)
So, the interloper – who has now been thrice-disgraced for a single transgression! – must slink out of the uri-cubicle (a cruder, but not strictly inaccurate, writer would have said that he must do so, moreover, with his tail between his legs).

So please take note, ladies. It is not all beer and skittles when you are a member of the privileged gender that is permitted to fart with relative impunity at ceremonial occasions.

DISCLAIMER: Do not, under any circumstances, on the basis of the above article, attempt to verbally remind the two outer, replacement urinators that it is you who are the rightful and original (yet obviously still temporary) occupier/overseer of the uri-cubicle complex. Doing so may result in the painful and unexpected loss of urination apparatus.