The first thing that hits me as I enter the bus is the almost overpowering smell: wet coats and cheap body spray; the sharp supermarket citrus smell that stings the back of my throat, and I know I'm already in trouble by the time I get up the steps.
I’d already needed a pee before I even left work. I knew it as i was standing by the office kettle, which has always got Dave's teabags strewn around it, filling my mug; and again when I was struggling to get my jacket on, telling myself, I’ll just go when I get home. Now I’m paying for it. The driver barely gives me time to swipe my bus pass before he jerks away from the kerb, and the whole bus lurches forward, my bladder lurching right along with it, like it’s in on the joke and I’m not.
Every seat is full. People are crammed in the aisle, shoulder to shoulder. Half of them are bent over their glowing screens like it's a church ceremony. I edge sideways down the middle, doing my best not to bang into anyone and trying, stupidly, not to think about how desperate to pee I am. A bloke in a hi-vis jacket tuts when my bag clips his arm. A woman with headphones on doesn’t even glance up as she shuffles her hip tighter against the pole, closing the tiny space where I might have squeezed in.
I end up wedged in the middle of the bus, one hand clamped around the cold metal rail, the other jammed between my bag and my side. There’s no way to cross my legs. No space to twist. We’re all locked together like pieces of a jigsaw in a box.
“Oh my god, fuck, not now,” I mutter quietly under my breath, more breath than sound really, as another bump in the road jolts through my body. I dig my knuckles into my thigh like that’s really going to help any! A thin, hot leak slips out anyway, slow and sneaky, into my panties before I can clamp down tightly enough. It feels warm, at least it does to start with!
Panic flares, sharp and bright. No. Not here. Not now. I squeeze every muscle I’ve got, my toes curling in my shoes, and for a second, it actually works. The trickle stops. The bus moves slowly onwards; each traffic light stop feels like an eternity.
I try to distract myself. I count the adverts above people’s heads. I read the tiny print on the emergency exit signs. I focus on a girl’s sparkly phone case, two people in front of me, her thumb flying like she’s trying to beat some sort of high score. I think of anything but the heavy ache inside my bladder. Someone near the front laughs at something on their screen. Coins jangle in someone’s pocket, quiet voices all around me, mixed with the Southend chavs yelling at the back. The driver brakes too hard, and a wave of bodies sways into me, pressing me tighter between strangers on all sides. No room to shift. No escape. Just this bus and this stupid, aching need that’s starting to feel way too familiar.
Another stop. More people cram on. A backpack digs into my ribs from behind. Someone’s damp umbrella brushes my leg. For a second, I’m weirdly more annoyed about the umbrella than the fact I’m about to piss myself. The bus feels hot and close, full of other people’s breathing, rustling coats, the sound of the engine and the tiny noises of everyone just existing. My whole world shrinks down to the hot, heavy weight low in my belly and the thin cotton of my panties trying to hold back what feels like a tidal wave.
I’m literally wetting myself on this bloody bus.
A shaky little noise scrapes out of my throat. It could almost be a laugh, if it didn’t sound so close to a sob. It shouldn’t excite me. It absolutely should not. Pee is dripping into my panties whilst people around me just scroll on their phones. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a door I don’t usually touch creaks open.
This isn’t even new; that’s the worst part. I figured out years ago that wetting turned me on, alone in my bedroom with a hand towel, a big bottle of water and a very shaky kind of courage. It wasn’t even some big planned thing, more like a stupid dare I gave myself, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The warmth, the soaking, the deliberate letting go, my whole body just lit up. I told myself it was a one-off, a strange little experiment I’d never do again. I told myself that each and every time.
Turns out my body remembers it a lot better than my so-called conscience.
The next leak comes with less warning. Just a bump in the road and then heat, sudden and unstoppable. My muscles grab at it, but they’re tired, and my bladder has decided the argument is over. Warmth blooms through my jeans, right where my thighs are pressed tightly together! The cotton of my panties goes from merely damp to heavy in a few shocking seconds.
The embarrassment hits at the same time as a different feeling. Shame tips and spills into something darker, something I know too well. My cheeks burn, and so does the skin between my thighs. My panties feel heavy and warm against me, every tiny shift making the soaked fabric drag over where I’m already aching.
The scent rises slowly, threaded through the bus’s usual smell. It’s not strong, but I know exactly what it is, and that alone makes my heart pound harder. My pulse flutters in my throat. I can hear my own breathing now, short and shaky, under the low noise of the engine. Christ, what if someone smells it? All the passengers sitting near me are half-asleep, but still...
I know I should be horrified. Instead, I just hang there, hanging onto the rail, and let the line between panic and pleasure smear together. The wet patch spreads under me, hidden by denim, hidden by bodies. It crawls along the floor near my shoes, a dark, creeping puddle I pray no one notices when they get off. My arousal punches higher with every second I don’t clamp down. I give up on trying to be a well-behaved adult with a normal commute.
Oh yes… just go, I whisper in my head, because saying it out loud would be insane. I tell my own body to do what it’s been begging to do for ten stops. Let it run. Let it flood. Let it be done.
Something feral in me stretches and bares its teeth. There’s a wild relief in giving up. I stop fighting. The stream becomes constant, hot and shameless, soaking through fabric, pooling, then seeping away. I feel it running down my legs, feel the cling as the denim sticks to my skin. I’m peeing on this bus when I absolutely know I shouldn’t, and the wrongness of it sends a hot, guilty throb low in my belly. It tightens, then snaps; a quick shuddering orgasm that leaves me gasping into my collar, hidden by the crowd, and the really strange thing is, nobody noticed anything!
Nobody looks at me, and that might be the strangest part of all!
A whole secret storm is happening in my jeans, and everyone around me is still half-asleep, half-engaged with their phones, their music, their own lives. A woman, two people ahead of me, yawns. The man with the hi-vis jacket checks his watch. The girl with the sparkly case scrolls on.
The crisis kind of breaks before the journey does, like someone’s let air out of me but not the bus. The awful pressure ebbs, leaving me empty and shaky, nerves fizzing like bad wiring. I’m still in the same spot, hand on the same rail, but everything inside me feels different. My legs are trembling a little. I’m scared to move, not because anything else will come out, there’s nothing left, but because I don’t want whatever this is to leave me.
Eventually, I approach my stop; I press the bell with a hand that doesn’t feel entirely steady. As the bus slows, people shuffle and open a narrow path. I walk down the aisle, feeling the cling and cool of my jeans, the odd squelch of fabric that has given up pretending to be dry. Nobody says a word. Nobody gasps or points. The world does not end.
I step off into the evening air, cool and ordinary. The bus pulls away with a wheeze, carrying its damp little secret and everyone who never even noticed. I’m left on the pavement with my coat wrapped a little tighter around my hips and a thrum under my skin that has nothing to do with the cold.
Christ, what if my flatmate smells it when I get in?
I’ve pissed myself on a crowded bus and got off on it hard.
That stupid little fact is probably going to keep me grinning like an idiot all night, every time I think about the look nobody gave me. And then I remember I still have to get past my flatmate wearing these jeans.
Maybe next time I'll just piss before the bus ride
...or maybe not!
