by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Perhaps it's the psychological effect of the raging St. Lawrence, or the arty joy of effortlessly melting and painting snow. But for whatever reason, Montreal is clearly the World Capital of Outdoor Peeing.

We do it often, we do it well and we do it with minimum disruption. It's time that our skill be recognized, maybe even become one of those timeless traditions they embrace in Molson ads.

You'll have to get over your anglo prejudices to fully appreciate the practice.

In English, we've never learned to respect the act. We've adapted "pissed" to mean "angry" or "drunk." "Piss off" is a prelude to a brawl. But not the French. They celebrate outdoor weasel draining. Belgians even worship at a statue known as Mannequin Pisse, which portrays an adorable boy holding his willie and providing a perpetual Robert Gillet cocktail.

Elsewhere the artisans of whiz are highly disruptive. Public monuments from Brazil to Berlin have been eroded by pee. Ontario declared zero tolerance on the practice. Places like Minnesota and Honolulu have recently made the peepee plague a front-page issue. Ohio even tried unsuccessfully to classify it as a sex crime.

Here, however, a query to the local cops about open-air flowing evoked a shrug. They couldn't tell me the first thing about it.

The uninhibited joy of public urinating also extends indoors in this town, I believe. Every time I stride up to a public urinal, some well-combed guy claims the adjacent porcelain receptacle and shamelessly peers over. The attempted pecker peek causes me to hug the urinal like a rodeo clown on a bucking bronco, crown jewels hanging astride the mothball puck and nib tip in the waterfall, causing an embarrassing bladder shyness that keeps me standing there forever.

Urinal peering is surely not the rule though. In 1998 Laval resident Christian Dominique Éthier, then 34, scammed over $500 at downtown malls by receiving compensation from 19 old-timers whom he accused of peering over.

It's a little studied phenomenon. But I'd suggest the lack of controversy indicates that our population is skilled at the art of wall watering. I'd also submit that considerable evidence suggests that parking lots stimulate a subconscious desire to drain the weasel.

I lived over such a lot behind the dumpster of a Chinese buffet restaurant next to Chez Parée. Window entertainment included watching skies darken with hungry seagulls, seeing vagrants unabashedly devour pineapple chicken out of the dumpster and watching armies of young bladders get emptied.

On the day the Habs last won the Cup (three years after they traded Chris Chelios for getting nailed peeing in public in Chicago), a Stanley Cup celebrant celebrated by relieving himself on my doorstep.

One is best to wait until the watery transgression ends before face-to-face confrontation. Once done, the boy seemed offended by my suggestion that his act wasn't protected by the Charter of Rights, suggesting a deeply-rooted and culturally dictated entitlement complex to public urination. Or maybe he was just an idiot.

Perhaps one of the most oft-watered walls downtown belonged to the Moustache, a long-defunct rock bar. Its clientele would compensate for their girly metal hair by expressing themselves through the exclusively male practice of projectile peeing. My dad, owner of the parking lot they'd stand on, would police against bladder-emptiers from his nearby balcony, electric megaphone in hand. Once started, he'd shock them with blaring and highly speculative comments about their relationships with their mothers. The noisy onslaught would frequently cause them to start dashing penis in palm and running away, drippy dick in tow.

The rockers forgot the cardinal rule: plant your feet! Other tips for this most indiscreet act: scout out suitable spots (out of sight, on grass or near a drain) for later relief while you're still sober, because by the time you need to make such a call you'll probably be too hammered to choose wisely.

And as a regular citizen, if you witness somebody doing this, holler, heckle, shame and ridicule him. It's nothing personal, and it's part of the ritual.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca