Old Men Can't Pee

Martin Feldman is fifty-nine, successful, competent, and reasonably certain that he understands how the world works.Then one morning it takes him forty-three seconds to pee.This is not, Martin decides, acceptable.What begins as an irritating biological malfunction soon develops into something much more inconvenient: evidence that his body has apparently begun making decisions without consulting him.Doctors offer explanations. Friends offer advice. His wife offers perspective. Martin would prefer a solution.As he navigates medical appointments, work, marriage, travel, friendship, bureaucracy, and the increasingly suspicious machinery of his own body, Martin discovers that aging is less a dramatic collapse than a steady accumulation of small negotiations. The knees complain. The bladder develops opinions. People retire. Routines change. Someone younger eventually knows where the file is.And beneath all of it sits the uncomfortable possibility that growing older may require something Martin has spent a lifetime avoiding: accepting that control was never quite as complete as he imagined.Funny, tender, and sharply observant, Old Men Can't Pee is a novel about aging, male dignity, friendship, marriage, mortality, and the small acts of maintenance that quietly keep both people and civilization functioning.Because getting older is inevitable.Getting sensible about it is apparently optional.