Bob is a paruretic. To have paruresis is to have a hard time urinating in the presence of other people. For 15 million low-level paruretics, most of them men, this means pretty much what it sounds like it means: You can't get going if there's someone at the next urinal, or beside you at the trough. It's the "shy kidneys" Niles Crane jokes about on "Frasier," or Helen Hunt making Paul Reiser hide in the shower and sing loudly while she voids when they're locked in their bathroom. An occasional annoyance; nothing to get catheterized over.

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For 1 to 2 million Americans, paruresis means something else entirely. They can only pee if there's no one else in the restroom. "It doesn't matter if there's a barrier or you're in a stall," says Bob. If someone can hear you, they can hear that you're not doing anything. It's a sort of performance anxiety that builds and feeds on itself. Bob again: "It's a succession of failures that keeps reinforcing that you can't do it."

And soon, by God, you can't. Extreme things start to happen. "There's a man in solitary confinement in a New Hampshire prison because he couldn't produce a sample," says Steve Soifer, president of the International Paruresis Association. Some paruretics turn to self-catheterization, carrying "self-cath" kits on their belts like Walkmen. Others become functional agoraphobics, never going to clubs, eating in, avoiding plane travel. "One man's marriage was falling apart because he'd refused to go on a vacation for 15 years," Soifer told me. Many paruretics even have trouble urinating in their own homes. Witness the following entry from the paruresis Web site : "I keep a half-gallon pitcher in a closet and if my roommate is home, I urinate in the locked closet and empty the pitcher when he leaves." According to Soifer, most paruretics can't even urinate near their spouses. A third have difficulty relieving themselves even when no one else is home.

Bob's problem has, for the past 10 years, kept him from having a relationship with a woman. "If my girlfriend was in bed with me and I had to get up and go to the bathroom I wouldn't be able to go because the bathroom is right by the bedroom. She'd wonder what was wrong with me." According to Soifer, other paruretics have gotten around this problem by "having their houses designed around their condition." (Inventiveness seems to be a hallmark trait. Bob devised a hand-held white noise machine that he made by recording the sound of his sonic toothbrush.)

Bob doesn't even like to have company over. "If the stereo is off and people are sitting right there where you're sitting, on the sofa, they can hear me in the bathroom."

But I am not company. I am -- stay with me here -- Bob's "pee buddy." A pee buddy is a component of graduated exposure therapy, one of the few techniques that seems to help paruretics. A therapist typically serves as the pee buddy the first time around, but from then on in, it's anyone you can get: a fellow paruretic, a sympathetic friend, a curious reporter. The buddy's job is simple. You are the stranger in the restroom, or the guest on the sofa, whatever is needed. Only instead of a stranger, you're a supportive, nonjudgmental presence and/or curious reporter. As Bob puts it, "You're basically showing yourself that yes, you can do it."

Bob has downed three large glasses of water prior to my arrival. "Right now I have a light to moderate urgency level," he tells me. As will happen numerous times this afternoon, I don't seem to have a reply for what I've just been told. "I think a few more sips and I'll be ready to try it."

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