While TREKKING THE EBC, rarely did any of the restroom facilities have any kind of apparatus that you could actually sit on. So, "A Game of Holes" might be the better title for this… but it was very much a game, and the challenge was this: try to find a toilet shack that was not an absolute misery to occupy. Winning this game would be to finally find the trifecta: a shack with a proper toilet you can sit on, enough privacy to accommodate our ingrained American modesty, but also with enough light that you can see what you are doing.

Now, if you would have asked me before this trip why a restroom might need a window, I would have offered up the logic that windows provide much needed ventilation and allow unpleasant smells to escape instead of being trapped to linger. But when you have no electricity, ventilation is very much a secondary function to the window’s primary purpose— to provide light. Remember, my friend Kimby is having to also use these little shacks to EXPRESS BREAST MILK, and without a window, she would be doing this in complete darkness. Good luck with that, Kimby!

So, a window opening provides much needed light, but it’s a double-edged sword: In situations like this, where people are living and working on top of each other in the closest of possible proximities, well, let’s just say that modesty goes straight out the window. And I mean that quite literally. The addition of a window, while definitely a boon, with its addition of light and ventilation, can also make things quite awkward when you realize that just outside the little room where you are doing your personal business, there are often local people.

Yes, out the window are human people, just going about thier business, their daily business. Some are working the field or tending to livestock, some are just wandering aimlessly… and none of them are probably paying you much, if any, attention. And yet, it is still a very surreal phenomenon. As you might have guessed, neither me nor Kimby were accustomed to seeing other people (or being seen by other people) while we are trying to use the facilities.

I would frequently try to assuage my anxiety by reminding myself that with the darkness of the room I was in, and the brightness of the outside daylight, the light differential would prevent the people in the field from being able to see me. That sounds good in theory, and I may have known it to be technically true, but all it would take is one turn of someone’s head in my direction, as if looking at me, and suddenly I’m instinctively buttoning up my pants and apologizing. Sure, they probably can’t see me at all, and definitely can’t hear me, but it’s an involuntary reaction. Also, I still had the irrational concern in the back of my mind that I MIGHT NOT EVEN BE DOING IT RIGHT. There are so many differing degrees of ingrained modesty, both on a personal and on a societal level, that this is what I often thought about while in these little shacks. That, and my old neighbors. Weird, I know.

When I first bought my house, it didn’t take long for me to realize that there was a very unusual and awkward phenomenon occurring with my two unbelievably sexy gay neighbors. My house was a traditional one-story house, with solid walls made of (opaque) wood. My next-door neighbors’ house was an ultra-modern, two-story home, with almost every wall made of (transparent) glass. Their bedroom loomed over my backyard, and with its entire wall made of see-through glass, at night the glass-walled room was like a lit-up movie screen.

And the movie playing on that screen was almost always a gay porno.

The light differential was the exact opposite from what I was describing earlier, in Nepal. In the situation with my neighbors, they could have on a mere bedside lamp (although they often had considerably more lights turned on, let me tell you), and with my backyard in complete darkness, it was possible to see every vivid detail of their sexy time.

They used to own both houses, mine and theirs, so I know wholeheartedly that they were aware of how their illuminated glass bedroom worked, at night, in relationship to my backyard. They were aware that they were on display, and it was obvious they enjoyed performing for me. To be completely honest, I had very little problem with them. I found it amusing, and if it was just me that could see them, who knows how long this might have continued.

But it wasn’t.

Shortly after I moved in and the nightly Porn Window made its debut, I got a call from my other neighbor. This was a very conservative Christian woman, who lived with her husband and small child on the other side of me, and she was clearly not a fan of the Porn Window. She was in a rare and inconsolable state, shrieking at me about how her child’s bathroom window was aligned in such a way that it provided a near perfect view of the illuminated gay sex. I think she might have even used the clichéd line, “Think of the children!” as she insisted that I sign her petition. I’m positive she used the phrase “sex crimes.” It was all very melodramatic, homophobic, and a touch mean-spirited.

“Hold on Delores,” I interrupted, “I’m sorry, what exactly is your petition trying to accomplish again?” And who do you plan to give it to, I might have added. Them? Jonathan and Tyler, the two chiseled gay "sex criminals" in the window? The men that look as if they sprang from the cover of a Men’s Fitness magazine or a shaving commercial? Good luck convincing the rest of the neighborhood that this needs to come to an end.

“We’ve got to put a stop to this! Don’t you agree? This can’t be allowed to continue!”

“What can’t be allowed to continue, Dolores? Is this a petition to insist they hang up curtains? Because the way I see it, they are two consenting adults that are having sex in their own bedroom.”

“But we can all see them!”

“But you don’t have to look at them if it bothers you, Dolores,” I said, and then I spent the rest of the night on the computer, Googling, to see what the law actually says about this. Can you really do whatever you want to, when you are in your own home? What if your home has ridiculous glass walls? How about just a normal window? For example, could I walk around naked in front of my main, street-facing window, if I so chose? Who is at fault (if anyone) should things get hot and heavy between me and a gentleman caller? What if, before I have a chance to close the blinds, the whole neighborhood stands in a very particular, strategic spot and sees us having sex? Could I get a…. ticket or something? Or is the worst thing that could happen just to possibly be served with an embarrassing petition from the neighbors, recommending more drapery?

Well, no matter how I phrased my Google question it produced so much actual porn that I couldn’t help but wonder if Dolores, too, got similar results. If this is what she’d just had to sift through, right before calling me, it would explain why she was so worked up. Maybe there was some actual legal advice about this topic to be found on the internet, but if so, it was buried deep beneath mountains and mountains of gay porn.

I never found any conclusive legal documentation stating what the city of Dallas says about any of this, and eventually I just gave up, tired of being solicited gay internet sex with every search result. Why would I want to watch any of that online when (for a limited time only, until Dolores and her petition shuts it down), I have real-life gay sex looming brightly above my backyard?

There’s one more thing I often thought about, while trying to squat-poo in the poo-shacks of Nepal (with all the friendly locals milling about just outside the glassless window holes…) and that is my teenage probation officer.

After getting arrested in high school for drug possession, I found out in a very humiliating and unusual way that I am somewhat pee shy. Part of my probation terms mandated that I pee in a cup once a week, for urine testing.

Okay, fair enough.

What I didn’t find out until after I had signed the legal agreement, was that my male probation officer would be breathing down my neck the entire time I tried to pee.

Literally.

Supposedly, it was to verify that there was no foul play going on, like maybe to catch someone trying to swap out their dirty urine with someone else’s clean sample they’d brought with them in their pocket from home, but it felt a little more invasive than that.

My officer would stand behind me with his chin basically on my shoulder, like a second head sprouting out of my clavicle, and stare straight down at my dick. I was supposed to pee like this, on cue, once a week.

Well that simply wasn’t happening, sorry. I urge you, try this with a buddy and see what happens, see if you don't freeze up. Or better yet, ask a short, middle-aged white man to do it with you, and make sure he's short enough that he has to awkwardly stand on his tippy toes to see over your shoulder. There was even some additional pressure, because if I was unable to produce pee within a few minutes or so, I would forfeit my chance and have to wait another hour or so to try again, after my P.O.’s next appointment. Some days, my mother and I were in that waiting room for upwards of four hours, while I guzzled gallons and gallons of water and repeatedly tried to pee in front of this funny little man.

I eventually overcame my pee shyness, thank goodness. But it wasn’t until Nepal— with its dark shacks, squatty holes, and windows that often opened to bucolic fields peppered with Nepali workers—that I realized I hadn’t quite conquered my poo-shyness yet. In fact, I didn’t even know I had such a shyness, seeing as how my probation officer never asked for a stool sample.

I wonder if he would have still tried to sit behind me on the toilet with his chin on my shoulder?

Now there’s a game of thrones I hope I never have to play.