At first, sure, snorkeling was his attempt at being “zen.” To forget the stresses of the job that bound him to San Francisco, forever to San Francisco. Yet it was, at the very least, a job that afforded him the luxury of diving in the Pacific. And, when that proved too cumbersome, simply snorkeling. Swimming with the fish as he was never metaphorically able to in life, specifically on a professional level, an arena wherein he had to be a shark. A voracious one, at that. When it came to women, however, he couldn’t seem to extend that voraciousness, to translate it into something usable for flirtation. It was thus that he, by happenstance, granted, decided to channel his sexual frustrations into the water, where he, perchance, espied a woman in her mid-twenties. This much he was sure of based on the “tautness” of her skin he could gauge from underwater.

Initially, his reaction was to cave to societal decorum and swim away. But when he caught a glimpse of her snatch as she adjusted her bathing suit bottom, he froze. Couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes away–his vision being so unobstructed and all. So he remained…waded “innocently.” She didn’t seem to notice, at the outset. But he was a novice at that moment. Didn’t know how to make his presence come across as organic as opposed to sinister and pervy. So it was that she, horrified by the sudden revelation of his existence, proceeded to scream with the shrillness of a banshee. And, of course, whenever a woman screams like that, everyone assumes it’s rape or murder. All he was doing was having a little peep, a little visual feast. Why was that a crime? He didn’t have time to dwell on the bizarre taboo of voyeurism as he swam for his life. The last thing he needed was any publicity of a controversial nature directed toward him and, by extension, the company. No, no. He had to be more careful next time. Couldn’t be so cavalier with his gaze and the length of his lingering.

It was a beginner’s zeal that had gotten him into trouble. And he never made the same mistake twice. It was the reason why he had gotten so far ahead in business, therefore life. In his strides to be perceived as a legitimate snorkeler, he went all out in purchasing every piece of equipment. The more expensive and useless, the better. No one could or would question his legitimacy with these accoutrements. How could they? What was more authoritative than a white man with “tools”? This time around, he wouldn’t make the mistake of targeting an isolated woman. Instead, he would position himself amid a larger crowd for the purposes of discretion. Rather than being highly suspect at Stinson Beach, near his Sausalito hideout, he would feign being an average San Franciscan “kook” by snorkeling in China Beach. He knew it could be a risk to assume he would be accepted merely as a weirdo –for there are fewer and fewer of those than ever in SF. A city now thriving on the corporate tech cash that had made it (and so many other metropolises) a parody of itself. Even so, he took a gamble. He was a gambling man, after all. It’s how he had come this far.

And as he prowled the chilled water in a wetsuit pretending to have an intense interest in fish that wasn’t pussy, he came to find that only the hairy-legged feminist chicks seemed to gravitate to water this freezing. It didn’t allow for much in the way of adequate arousal, thus he was left with no choice but to take a more expensive tack: a vacation in Italy. Where he was absolutely certain all the attractive women were hiding.

Lo and behold, it was already while on the plane that he felt his suspicion to be proven correct. Resisting his natural urge to ogle, he threw himself into the latest shat out Hollywood movie that was made all the worse as a result of being “edited for content” for plane audience consumption. No wonder it was so easy to profit off the stupidity of the masses.

Upon landing at Fiumicino, Sean was swift in making his moves toward the Amalfi coast, where, to be sure, he was bound to find more than just pesce in a grotto. As he jumped with abandon from the boat he had rented for the day, he immediately found this to be the case. Overwhelmed, in fact, by the options he was met with. Women with curves, women with washboard abs, women with gluteal implants. He was in no short supply of material to study.

Yet, despite hours of trolling, he still hadn’t laid his eyes on that which he truly wanted to see: someone pissing. Just letting it all go in order to embody every sense of the word “relaxed.” Had he made an error? Assumed American uncouthness was a worldwide trend when it wasn’t?

Just when he was on the verge of giving up entirely, he caught it–a golden flash out of the corner of his eye. The flood of arousal he had been waiting for at last beholdable before his unobstructed vision in this crystal clear blue water. He was so in awe of the length and pure yellowness of the urine that he forgot to pretend to move around enough to pass himself off as a bona fide snorkeler and not just some creep with a boner. In his fugue state, he was caught. Yet, unlike the garden variety American hen he had scandalized the first time back at Stinson Beach, this Italian vision–whose name he would later come to find was Valeria–gradually, almost without him being aware of it, slipped away like some mermaid nymph out of his view, leaving nothing but a telltale jet stream of muddied amber water behind. She was taunting him–that goddess of piss. What did it mean, he wondered.

Did she want him to return to this spot again to catch her in the act? Surely that’s what she had intended him to think with that come hither swim style of hers. Surely. So the next day, after imbibing a spremuta d’arancia (that had just enough of an orange-yellow tint to make him partially erect), he gathered his equipment to make his way to the same grotto as the day before, knowing in the depths of his testes that she would be there again.

He was downtrodden, however, as almost an hour passed without any sight of her. Then, at long last, she appeared in the same signature pineapple-print bikini that had drawn him to her in the first place. Testing his theory of her desire to be watched as she urinated in the water, he swam closer without abashment. His heart raced as he partially assumed she would start screaming, prove herself to be as puritanical as all the rest. But she didn’t, floated stock-still for a moment as he approached until finally, she did it. Released her urine right in the direction of his face. As though is erection might float his entire body to the surface of the water and up into the sky, he could contain himself no longer, peeling out of his vestiary encumbrances to toss her onto a rock and pin her to it as she continued to piss, a glorious unending stream that he bent down to drink from.