From Paul Tester, the author of “The All Day Girls“. See this update post.
The Notting Hill carnival has always, and I hope remains a good place to see desperate ladies. Crowds, uninhibited consumption of alcoholic drinks, and, when it first started, too few Ladies toilets.
My best sighting was on my first visit, before I realised the full potential for sighting. I had casually stopped to look at a long queue for the Ladies, when a lady about 35 years old, wearing tight brown cord trousers, hurried out of the crowd and joined the line. Almost immediately she sat on a low wall and crossed her legs. She turned to the lady behind her in the line and I quite clearly heard her say,
“I want to pee so badly I have to sit down to help me wait.”
The line was moving very slowly, but eventually she had to stand up to keep her place. First she tried to stand with only her legs tightly crossed, literally twisted together as tightly as was humanly possible, then after a short time like this, with a very worried or stressed look on her face, she must have felt that she was not able to hold back her pee any longer like this, so she half bent forward or curtseyed and with a groan of desperation, put both hands between her legs. For the rest of the time I could see her in the queue, she was holding herself with both hands and twisting her legs together as tightly as she could. It was noticeable, even from where I was standing, pretending I was not interested in a queue of ladies waiting for the toilet, that she was pressing between her legs with all the strength she could manage and needed both hands to get as much pressure as she could. Despite her exposed position in the queue, she never once tried to hide what she was doing, and it looked to me as if she simply did not care who could see, just so long as she could hold back her pee. Her expression, and actions were those of absolute desperation. The only thing that mattered to her was holding back her pee, and she did not care what she did, or who could see her. The pressure in her bladder must have felt enormous if she thought that she needed the strength of both hands to hold it back.
The queue moved slowly forward and eventually she was out of my sight down the stairs to the Ladies. For the rest of the time that I could see her she continued to hold herself with both hands, her expression and movements indicating that she was pressing as hard as she could. At a guess, she still had to wait many minutes before she was at the front of the line and could get into a cubicle and pee, but this was out of my sight and only seen by the other women in the line. What a sight it must have been, this woman going frantic trying to hold in her pee; in anticipation of the release to come probably making her need even more urgent and desperate. If she already needed the pressure of both hands to hold back her pee, what else could she do to hold it back. Not being as experienced at lurking as I now am, I stupidly did not hang about to see her leave the Ladies, and to check if she made it and managed to hold her pee and keep her jeans dry. Only those in the line with her will ever know how frantic she was then, and if she managed to wait.
I think of her as “The most desperate lady I ever saw”, though it is difficult to measure desperation. Subjectively, I have never seen anyone else trying so hard to hold back her pee.
More soon…