From the first pages of K-Ming Chang's novella Cecilia, narrator Seven is preoccupied with urine. She describes overhearing the strong flow of a chiropractor's urine in the toilet, and remarks upon the receptionist's quieter stream. She holds her own urine until her bladder "tautens into a grape of pain"; later, while dreaming of Cecilia, she wets the bed. Seven received her strange name because her mother drank nothing but 7-Up while she was in the womb, "until her piss thickened into syrup." At one point in a childhood flashback, inspired by a wilderness survival TV show, Cecilia urges Seven to pee in her mouth. (Seven misses and mostly soaks Cecilia's shirt.)

Urine may be a natural product of our bodies, but it's still heavily stigmatized. Public urination is frowned upon at best and illegal at worst; "scrubbing toilets" is synonymous with menial, unpleasant labor; losing control of one's bladder is seen as the height of indignity. As the unnamed survival TV show (likely Man vs. ...