the incontinence horror
Then he stopped being able to anticipate when he needed to as it were visit the powder room. A fastidious gender-dysphoric’s horror of incontinence cannot properly be described. Fluids of varying consistency began to pour w/o advance notice from several openings.
Context
Withdrawal's assault on dignity itself, pitched at the exact register that makes it worse: for someone whose whole self is a fastidious constructed comeliness, the body's loss of continence is not merely physical suffering but the collapse of the identity he has curated. The euphemism ("visit the powder room") straining against the fact ("pour w/o advance notice from several openings") is the scene's method — high camp diction holding off an abjection it cannot actually hold off.