Guilty Pleasures: nature

At 7.30 this morning I saw a penis. I’m a big fan of the little man, so nine inches out of ten this would usually be a welcome start to my day. I’d be chuffed, for example, had I spied a demi-tumescent David on a morning stroll through my Renaissance sculpture garden. Or looked up at the right time at the matinee of a Buns of Steel Vegas hen’s bender. Or been awoken beachside at the Aegean’s premier nudist resort by a wine-dark Adonis bearing dawn cocktails.

Alas, the male part I scoped from my dim-sum-bound tuk tuk was a policeman’s sorry fingerling answering the call on the wall of Sisowath High. He and his mate had just come off shift extorting money from kids not wearing helmets. Maybe, like many members of the animal kingdom, corrupt cops mark their territory. Devil-may-care middle-class Scoopy riders are probably worth their weight in Muscle Wine back at the squad room. Maybe he was just a lazy prick who should have known better, being a role model for the Future of Cambodia and all. Perhaps I’m being uncharitable. The poor fellow may have real health issues. Incontinence can be a consequence of Type 2 diabetes, plus this little piggy was no manorexic. Probably thanks to stealing all that candy from babies.

But maybe he was just too exhausted to make it back to HQ; our law enforcement officials have been so busy lately, after all. Whatever his excuse, there’s not one for flailing his weensy hose willy-nilly in full view of Norodom peak-hour traffic. Oh. Maybe he was drunk. So that’s OK then. Whatevs. It was enough to put me off my chicken paws.

Unless we’re a nutter, or drug fucked, or it’s New Year’s Eve 1998 in the Mount Gambier Safeway car park, we women don’t just drop trou and piss all over town. We plan ahead, or find a dunny while we’re out and about, or just hold it. If this sounds like sour grapes, I admit I’m occasionally envious of the practical aspects the male member affords, most so when I need to spend a pretty penny or twenny. I’ve lamented my lack of convenient tonk on many a miasmic loo stop en route to Temple Town. Or after one too many vodka Red Bulls in the aptly named ‘powder room’ of <insert noxious nightclub here>, scowling and Pretzel-legged for 20 minutes until the inevitable sextet of ladyboys and strumpets tumble giggling from the only unclogged cubicle.

And though there are fewer people to disgust if you’re caught short outdoors outback Downunder, seeing a man about a dingo can nevertheless be fraught. I love camping: sausages and sauce in bread for breakfast, leaping into remote lakes with your togs off, watching your shirtless bronzed beau and his hot mates stride across the Gibber Plains towards a galah-pink sunset. But after a day frolicking in exhausting nature it’s hard to relax with a slab and a fire-side round of Michael Row The Boat Ashore when you know later there’s a life-threatening chance you’ll dock with a 300-year-old fire ant colony or douse a previously sleeping eastern brown snake of the trouserless kind.

Plus I don’t know if you’ve been outside with thousands of miles of moonless night around you and not a soul in sight, but it’s a bit spooky. Which means you have to coerce someone to go with you; certainly not the private comfort stop everyone was hoping for. During daytime it’s even harder. It’s not exactly old growth rainforest out beyond the black stump. You’ll be lucky to find a tiny bush, let alone a rocky outcrop. A fluorescent white arse is not naturally camouflaged in the wide brown motherland I used to call ‘home’. A bit of old stick doesn’t provide a colossal bot any protection from the airhorns of a gurning trucker clocking 200 down the highway. He can see you 20 miles off and by jingo he lets you know about it.

CharmingVille’s not the only place on the planet where blokes unzip and let rip, and our coppers aren’t the only ones painting the town yellower than a colonial pile and stinking up the great outdoors. But lads: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You’re pissing all over your Kingdom, fellas! Only the other night, incidentally during a nature break between episodes of Idol, I heard an epic voiceover on a StarWorld station ident dramatically intone: ‘Home is not the house that you sleep in, but the place where you stand.’ Exactly. And who wants to be standing in their own wee?