Short Story

INSIDE 553

by

Michael Davidson
 

The fifth floor Men's bathroom is closed today. Locked for no one to use. There is no sign posted on its door warding off the public, nothing at all that makes it seem even slightly different on the outside than any other bathroom in the Regenstein Library, just the plain gray door with a black plaque mounted on the center indicating the room number: 553 MEN.

I don't know how I feel about this.

When I was still alive this bathroom was open for use. The only prerequisite for entry was your sex. You had to be male, and that I was. Every now and then I would take a hiatus from my duties as a student and 553 would serve as my respite. Sometimes I would do the more obvious things in here, like urinate in the urinal, or defecate in the toilet, or wash my hands in the sink. Other times I would do things not quite as obvious but still expected from all normal men, like masturbate, or stare at myself for prolonged periods in the mirror checking for blackheads and making sure my hair was sufficiently disheveled.

That was about all I used to do inside 553 during my freshman and sophomore year as an undergraduate. And then I got myself a girlfriend, my first girlfriend.

Up until then I had gotten to the point where I masturbated at least three times a week inside 553, and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to feel a bit ashamed of myself. I was a twenty-year-old virgin masturbating in a public bathroom three times a week. Sure, there were other guys out there that were similar to me in this perverse respect, but I didn't know any of them and that made me feel just that much lonelier. The only thing I had going for me was that I didn't masturbate anywhere else. So, my room and bathroom were free from all innuendoes of the sinful act. However, the reason why I limited masturbation to inside 553 was not out of self-discipline. I lived in a dorm with other people, and to get caught masturbating amongst the only people I saw and conversed with on a regular basis would've been an irrevocable blow to my delicate ego. Therefore, I only did it inside the single stall of 553, which, over time, had grown to be more like my home away from home.

Anyhow, my first and last girlfriend was Julie. I met Julie in one of my classes and, unlike every other occasion when I was attracted to a girl, I somehow mustered up the audacity to ask her out on a date. I thought it would be nice if we went to see a Friday night movie together at the theater on campus. She agreed.

When Friday night came I thought it would be best if I looked as though I was completely indifferent towards the whole event. I left my hair messy as it had been all day, I didn't change into decent looking clothes, and I made sure I looked overly exhausted. She, on the other hand, looked great when I saw her that night with her straight red hair and an outfit that was conservative and alluring. Her lips were shaped perfectly without lipstick, her eyes could've been blue, green, or purple, depending on the light around her, and her ears made me want to take her into my arms and kiss them until she could hear my longing. I felt like masturbating.

During the entire duration of the movie I was thinking exclusively about what to do after the life on the screen died and there was nothing left to watch. I asked myself: Should I take her to a coffee shop and talk? Should I ask if she wants to come back to my place and talk there? Or should we just walk around campus until we got bored? Don't ask me why, but I went in favor of the latter.

After the movie ended we walked aimlessly around campus until it was unanimously decided that things should stop before we killed ourselves; the whole night was filled with this dreadful silence that only worsened when one of us opened our mouths:

"Did you like the movie?" I asked her.

"Yeah."

A minute of silence.

"What did you like about it?" she asked me.

"I never said I liked it."

Another minute of silence.

"Oh. I got the impression that you liked it," she said contritely.

"Not really."

I ended up taking her home shortly thereafter and saying goodnight with a distant hug, no kiss. She was cute, and I liked her way of being, but we weren't great at being social people, or at least I wasn't.

The next time we had class together I avoided her as best I could by sitting in the back and not saying a word. Of course, I could've refrained from going to class all together, but something inside me wouldn't let that happen; maybe it was hope. Sure enough, when the professor let class out, Julie clumsily found her way to the back of the classroom and tapped me on the shoulder even though I was already looking at her.

"Want to do something this Friday, I mean, if you're free?"

I couldn't believe she was asking me out after our previous nightmare together. Was she that desperate? I looked down at the carpeted floor, which was what I usually did when I wanted to give off that faraway, languid feeling, and then looked up at her wondering if she would be hurt if I said no. It's not that I wanted to say no to her, it's just that I didn't know if I could be subjected to the horror of another gauche evening.

"Sure," I said. I had far too much to lose if I told her otherwise. I was a twenty-year-old virgin who masturbated regularly inside 553.

"Okay. Let's meet on the first floor of the Reg then at, say, seven o'clock."

I said sure again. She said bye and left promptly.

That Friday I went to eat dinner at Pierce Dining Hall before my second date with Julie. This time I was a little more relaxed since she asked me out and seemed as though she had a plan that wouldn't leave us in a perpetual state of awkwardness.

I walked back to my dorm room after a semi-satisfying meal and thought about what to wear. In the past I had gone with the indifferent look because if things didn't work out, at least I didn't get stuck appearing as though I actually cared. In other words, my look was designed in anticipation of my failure. However, the indifferent look didn't quite work to my advantage last time with Julie so I figured it would be unadvisable to go for that look again. This time I would try to look presentable. I decided to wear my only pair of khakis, a white long-sleeved dress shirt, which I would tuck in, and a black belt with black shoes. When I studied myself in the mirror I was taken aback: never in my life had I looked so good and so vulnerable; I kept my hair uncombed to give me a way to deal with possible failure.

When I got to the Reg she was already waiting with a messenger bag strapped diagonally around her torso, from right shoulder to left hip. Once again, she had dressed well for the occasion, wearing a pair of fitted blue jeans and a baby-blue shirt one size to small with a neckline that exposed the horizontal beauty of her collarbone. And once again I felt like masturbating. She waved and I couldn't believe she was waving at me.

"There you are," she said. "You look nice. Really."

"What did you want to do at the Reg?"

Everything about me was rude and abrupt.

"Well, I thought it would be fun to go back in the stacks and watch some short films on my laptop."

"What?"

"You know, there're Ethernet connections in the stacks . . ."

"So?"

I didn't realize I had interrupted her until it already happened.

"Well, it's really easy to watch short films because the connections are so fast. I usually go back there when I study so that I can watch films whenever I get bored."

I still was not quite sure what she was talking about but decided to just follow her lead anyway, which was unusual for me . . .

You see, I'm really an uptight guy even though I try not to act like it; I hate when people are late and I never like wasting more time than necessary, that's why I don't go out much. There are too many things to do during the day for me to hang out. Most people would never know this about me. They only know the person that talks extensively about getting plastered and sleeping a lot and spending an obscene amount of time on the couch watching television, but none of that is true. I'm a serious guy. I study all the time. I care about my future. You might be wondering why I went out on this date then. Honestly, I don't know. Every now and then I would think about how much work I could be getting done if I were on the fifth floor studying in the stacks instead of spending time with Julie, but something inside of me repudiated that thought before it had a chance to take another breath.

"Do you have a preferred floor?" she asked me when we got inside the elevator.

"Actually, I do."

I pressed the button leading to the fifth floor, it glowed, and we started on our way up to the top.

"You like the fifth floor?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I usually work on the third floor."

"Third floor is too busy for me."

"C'mon, it's not that bad."

She smiled and I could feel the ice pick breaking into the ice.

The elevator door opened, and we walked into the stacks. The stacks was an intimidating place for most people. It was an enormously quiet area with countless shelves of books and nothing else except for good size desks running along the circumference. If you wanted to get a lot of work done, you would plant yourself in one of these desks and work without interruption; the desks looked straight at a wall so there was little possibility of distraction. I loved working on these desks. In fact, I couldn't work anyplace else on the fifth floor.

I led her to the desk where I usually worked in the stacks hoping that there was no one already there. There wasn't, so we sat down. She got her laptop up and running as I waited petulantly in the chair.

"All right, let's see here . . . ," she said curiously.

Julie was searching the Internet for different sights with short films. I can't remember any of the names, but there were a lot of them.

"Here we are. This is my favorite sight. It has no censorship, which gives it plenty of variety."

It was a colorful sight with a long list of short films. She clicked on one of the blue titles and a small black screen immediately popped up. There was a buffering period, which lasted a few seconds, and then the movie began. It was called "Ridiculous Me." Julie laughed out loud at nearly every corner of the dialogue. I did too. The film was actually very humorous. It consisted of a series of incompetent mistakes and at the end of each mistake different people from off the street would be filmed saying, "ridiculous me," without knowing what preceded their comment.

The next film was just as entertaining, but it was more of a drama. It was called, "Illumination." I appreciate drama more than anything else. It seems to me that everyday life is teeming with such diverse emotions and in order to do it any justice there must be passionate love affairs, painful cries of separation, mounds of symbolic imagery, carefully constructed metaphors, and tragic death. Without these ingredients, any medium of creative art is doomed for failure. "Illumination" was a success.

"That was great." I said after the film ended without being asked. "I really enjoyed that."

"You did?"

"Yeah, it had the drama of life in every scene."

"I didn't know you liked dramas?"

"I love dramas! How else could there be love? How else could there be pain?"

Julie stayed quiet and looked at me like never before. A book fell onto the linoleum floor behind us. She gave a startled jump, placed her hand on her heart, and smiled unknowingly. I had a feeling that now would be the perfect time to unite lips, but I didn't have the courage to go through with it. Instead, the word osculate echoed in my head and a waterfall of inane thoughts submerged me.

"Let's watch one more," I said with a gasp.

"Okay."

She ran down the list and found one called "The Fury of Love." The opening scene showed a man's fists hitting a demure woman in the face. The woman's face split open more with every landed blow, but she never retaliated, she never even cried in pain. After a sixty-second bout the woman's face was no longer demure. It was a bloody pulp. Then the camera rotated around so that it shifted from seeing the man's fists to seeing the profile of the man's entire body. As the camera zoomed out it became apparent that there was no woman to begin with, the man was looking into a shattered mirror painted in his own blood. He knelt down on the ground and cried with the palms of his hands covering his entire face as his blood left him.

The remainder of the film was nothing but pornography; fifteen minutes of hardcore love scenes between the same man in the beginning and the same demure woman who ended up not really being there in the end. Sexual sounds shattered the silence of the stacks as beautiful breasts bobbed up and down in different positions of penetration. The film concluded with a long embrace between the two lovers.

"Wow! Now that was intense," said Julie.

"Y-Yeah."

I could barely speak. I was far too preoccupied with trying to conceal my erection underneath my khakis.

"I n-need to g-go to the bathroom. I'll be r-right back. Okay?"

I stood up quickly and left with my hands over my crotch. It was refreshing to see 553 waiting for me close by. I walked in, went straight to the single stall, unzipped my khakis, and started masturbating with religious fervor. Julie would be wondering what I was doing in the bathroom, especially after watching "The Fury of Love," if I took any longer than a few minutes. I had to speed things up. Fast stroke - faster stroke - fastest stroke, the tip of my penis was beginning to enlarge, when . . .

. . . there was a knock on the door. I stopped momentarily to make sure that my senses were not deceiving me. The knock came again, slightly louder than before. I didn't know what to do. 553 might've been my home away from home, but the only prerequisite for entry was your sex; other men were free to use 553 without permission from inside.

"It's open," I said with a dry, cracked voice.

The door creaked ajar.

"Hi," a voice said in a whisper. "It's Julie."

What! I screamed on the inside.

Julie was on the cusp of entering 553. But she didn't meet the prerequisite; she was a female God damn it. I panicked. I looked down at my right hand wrapped around my penis and felt like dying on the spot. Here I was inside 553 masturbating, and my date was ten feet away from me.

"Uh . . . uh, I'll be out in a minute, Julie. Wait just a sec. Wait."

"Okay."

I heard the gray door close. I was safe from being discovered in the most pathetic of all human conditions. I looked down again at my penis and noticed it was hanging flaccidly. What a fucking relief. I was saved. I thought about finishing what I was doing before the unexpected interruption, but on second thought I decided against that understanding that the risk was far too great. I flushed the toilet quickly to make it seem like I was doing something normal in there and exited the stall in such a rush that I forgot to zip up my khakis.

Julie was standing right in front of me with her upper four teeth pressing down on her plump bottom lip. I thought she had left. My face went pale. My heart shuddered. I didn't know what to do. When I opened my mouth and tried to speak, she put her finger over my lips and shook her head in disagreement. I stayed quiet with my zipper down.

"I know what you were doing in there," she said.

How could she have known? The stall wasn't transparent. Or was it? Of course it wasn't transparent.

I replied in an almost plaintive voice, "Y-Yeah. I w-was going to the bathroom, Julie. That's all. What did you th-think I was doing?"

Cold sweat. Cold sweat coming from my armpits.

"Oh no you weren't. Don't lie. You were doing this."

She slipped her right hand passed my fallen zipper and got hold of my penis through my briefs. I couldn't believe what was happening. Her hand started stroking, not missing a beat, and I grew hard again.

"Weren't you?" she asked with a tinge of sultriness leaking from the sides of her mouth.

I didn't know how to answer her question. Was it even a question? If I said yes, she would think I was pathetic and probably stop doing what she was doing . . . but I liked what she was doing. If I said no, she would probably stop on the spot out of embarrassment . . . but damn, I liked what she was doing. You see my dilemma? On another note, I couldn't help but wonder how experienced Julie was at this. I was feeling mighty good with her warm hand stroking my penis, much better than if I was doing it alone in the stall of 553, but was this the same Julie that watched short films in the stacks? Maybe I misunderstood her from the very beginning.

"Touch my breasts," she said peremptorily.

"O-okay."

I won't go into further detail for the sake of unnecessary gratuitousness. Suffice it to say that we ended up having sex inside the stall. The same stall that had seen me masturbate an inordinate amount of times saw me pleasure a member of the opposite sex; saw me lose my virginity. It must've been proud of me, like parents watching their only son walk, though clumsily, for the first time.

In this way, at the beginning of my junior year, 553 miraculously transformed into the pad of a sexually active guy. And things were hot for quite some time . . .

At least three times a week, after several hours of studying, Julie and I would meet inside 553 to have sex just like that first time, except slightly more suave, at least I'd like to think that. Don't think that other males didn't come into the bathroom while the two of us were going at it; we had plenty of visitors, but it was all right since, like I've said before, the stall wasn't transparent. After our cavorting in the bathroom stall, we both came out refreshed and ready to start studying some more. In this way, I was a substitute for her short films, and she was a substitute for my masturbation. It was a convenient setup.

However, it would be foolish and misleading of me to give you the impression that our relationship only came to life inside 553. On the contrary, we often took walks around campus after class, ate together at Pierce Dining Hall, talked on the phone before we went to sleep, and so on. There were even times when we left the campus entirely and went to eat dinner downtown. Granted, these sojourns outside of Hyde Park didn't have too great a frequency, but they did happen nevertheless.

After a couple months of frolicking with Julie in more than one way, I realized that I was participating in that often celebrated relationship between man and woman; that unspoken bond between two individuals that can be so sweet, so sweet it becomes sour. Julie was my girlfriend, and I was her boyfriend.

I even started calling her Jules.

Jules this and Jules that.

"I love you, Jules."

"I love you, too."

Time passed in this pristine fashion. O! what a joyous time it was. I was smiling without knowing it. I was sleeping in such an ineluctable calm. I was dancing among the puffy white clouds on the lightest feet in the world. I was the man.

But eventually the escapades inside 553 started declining in frequency: from three times a week to two times a week to one time a week to no times a week. You had to have seen this coming.

You did, but I didn't. I didn't.

To the best of my knowledge she never started seeing another guy or anything like that. We didn't even get into one of those catastrophic arguments that end up destroying everything and nothing between two people caught up in proclamations of love and raging hormones. It was just an unexpected farewell on her part that happened after class. Everyone had left except for the two of us. I was still seated, writing down some last minute notes. She was hovering over me with a palpable droopiness that, at the time, I considered rather becoming. I should've known better.

"I think we should start seeing less of each other," she said without making eye contact.

I stopped writing.

"But why, Jules? Did I do something wrong?"

"It's complicated."

The pen fell from my limp fingertips.

"What're you saying? That it's over?"

"I know it hurts, but you have to trust me. It's for the best."

I felt the strings attaching my heart to the rest of my body snapping. I looked into her eyes - they were green at the time - to search for some uncertainty, maybe even fear of a future without me in her life. I waited for a small hint of a smile and some words claiming that she took everything back, that she still loved me. But nothing except unwavering conviction bled from her pores.

"But I thought you loved me?" I desperately asked.

"That's the thing. I don't think I ever did."

"Are you serious? How can you say that?"

"I just don't think I ever did. We had lots of sex. And I enjoyed it. I guess I confused things."

"Confused things? Jesus Jules. I loved you. I love you. What should I think now?" I said this with a thick snake in my throat.

"Don't think anything. Just get over it. We had a fling that I confused for love. But now I know it wasn't love. I'm young. I can't love anyone right now. Don't take it personally."

"You really mean it, don't you, Jules? You're breaking up with me."

"Yes."

She promptly left the room.

My heart dropped so long and so hard that it created the eye of a maelstrom that would eventually be my demise. I was alone again, but this time without my heart.

You have to understand. Jules was my first love. I was not capable of understanding what life would be like after my first love. Not only was I not capable, I was afraid. Afraid to live life alone again after having grown so terribly used to the comfort of that other hand.

During the following nights, while sleeping alone with opened eyes in my dorm room, I would feel sour tears roll down the contours of my pallid cheeks. Without blinking, more sour tears would well up, slide into the openness, and cake my face in a melancholic gleam. My nose sniffed desperately for an opening, but only found layers of mucous. It got so bad that I felt as though I could no longer breathe. But why should I breathe in the first place now that Jules was gone?

During the following days, to at least try and get over our breakup, I spent all my time studying on the fifth floor. Obsessing over class work. That is, until I died in the struggle. Death claimed me on the day that everything exploded in front of my sallow face . . .

But even now, when no one can see, hear, feel, taste, or smell me, I still study on the fifth floor of the Reg back in the stacks, but I changed desks because it's impossible for me to walk passed my usual desk without conjuring up images from that first night of watching short films with Jules, even though I'm already dead - imagine that. Everything about that night is colorful and vivid, almost as if it's more alive than the actual night. I even remember the alarming expression on her face when she commented on "The Fury of Love."

"Wow! That was intense."

That's what she said with big, owl eyes as she raised her left arm and used those ceramic fingers of hers to comb back several strands of red hair behind her left ear, which was shaped like a wonderful question mark.

Now I study directly opposite that desk, on the east end of the stacks instead of the west end, and never dare make the mistake of moving in an easterly direction again. I already made that mistake one time shortly after her schismatic words, and what followed was, unlike our relationship, indelible. It went something like this . . .

Once I sat down at that desk, everything about Jules flowed into me with an unrelenting force that resulted in me heaving in and out with suffocating breathes and miserable tears. I felt like a gong being smacked one time, two times, three times until the smacking eventually stopped and all that remained was the vibration that slowly attenuated into silence. Random images clambered about inside of me: a stone being hurtled into the ocean, a dog eating a cat, the sun burning all nine planets, a mountain transforming into a ripe breast and then disappearing into a disappointing mist, a finch talking with Darwin and explaining what really happened, a pair of fists repeatedly hitting a deceiving mirror.

I knew I had to do something, and the only thing I could do was follow the commands from inside me. I went to look for Jules on the third floor. It was not like I expected to mend our severed relationship, I did not even expect to find her, but I had to at least try. When I reached the third floor stacks everything looked the same as on the fifth floor, except I knew that the books were of a different subject matter. I walked around the periphery hoping that she would be studying, or maybe watching another short film if she was bored with the studying. She was not doing either. I told myself she was not there and decided to go back to the fifth floor and study. However, when I was making my way back to the stairwell I happened to pass the women's bathroom. The door was the same gray as my 553, but the black plaque read: 351 WOMEN. I would've just walked right by had I not heard moaning sounds coming from inside. There was no question about who it was. She was saying those two words that seem to stretch on forever under certain circumstances.

"Yea yeeeeessssss!"

I thought about opening the door, but I didn't meet the only prerequisite; I wasn't female. So I stood outside and listened carefully. There came those two words again. They were killing me.

She was with another guy and I loathed her for it. Even if I were canonized a saint I would still loathe her for doing what she was doing inside that bathroom. Heck, I would probably punish her with divine fury and then fix the halo above my pious head.

My thoughts raged on and on in this manner as those two words stretched inside the bathroom. I felt like trampling through the gray door and yelling something so profane everything would come to a halt and the tryst would end with her and her new lover shrinking so small that I would proceed to stomp them mush mush mush with both my gigantic feet.

However, in spite of my irate disposition, I felt my penis starting to throb from those stretched words coming out of her mouth again and again and again. I was aroused.

Notwithstanding my contempt, I imagined kissing her body, groping her body, having sex with her body, and a tingle surged inside me. I had to fight this feeling somehow. It was against my will, God damn it! She was controlling me, controlling how I felt, without even giving me the sex that I had grown so used to; she was giving it to someone else now.

I had to counteract everything she stood for. So I extracted all the personality from her, dehumanized her very being, and transformed her into strictly a body that was made for me to fuck long and hard with zero consideration. I imagined beating her body down with bludgeoning fists as I raped her.

But raping Jules only made me want her body more. Even though it was bruised in variegated blossoms of purple and blue, I still wanted to have sex with her behind the gray door. I thought about going in there and joining them without asking permission. Just insert my penis somewhere and go at it just like that. But I couldn't do it.

Instead, I found myself walking quickly upstairs, with my hand over my crotch, to my home away from home: 553. When the gray door closed behind me - no one else was in the bathroom - I heard a voice that told me: Go into the stall. I entered the stall. There she was: the porcelain toilet with its seat down and a silver-metal plume ascending behind it ready for the flush, waiting for me to ejaculate all over it. Unzip your pants. I used one hand to unzip my pants. The intricate sound of unraveling teeth made my groin shudder. Let your pants drop. My other hand unbuttoned my pants, and they quickly slid down to the tiled floor. This time a cold shiver bolted its way through my hairy bare legs and I could feel the throbbing intensify as my penis elevated to a personal record length in tiny increments. Now do what you know how to do best. I clutched my penis and started masturbating, but with each tingle came a flash image of her body.

I saw her naked breasts sprout hard nipples from her pink aureole as I held them between my groping hands harder than she could handle. She screamed. I saw her panties grow moist in preparation for my entrance: she knew what was going to happen was going to happen, and she wanted to end it quickly without fighting back. I heard her scream again as I stabbed at her clitoris with the point of my tongue and looked up from down below to see all her body coil and release in fear. The screaming grew louder. Books began to fall flat on the linoleum floor outside in the stacks with a wayward bang. The toilet flushed again and again. Men entered and left with bewildered expressions painted on their faces. And then I came all over the toilet seat. Everything left me as my prostate quivered, ripping through her body. She was used and dead in my head. I was satisfied.

I exited the stall of 553 and looked at the mirror expecting to see me, the victor. But no. Never. Staring at me with an untouched gaze was Jules. She was still alive and stunning as ever with red hair everywhere. Her eyes were blue.

"You," I said in disgust. "I thought I killed you."

I did not wait for a response. The drama consumed me. I ran over to the mirror and started cursing and slapping and punching until everything was over. Until I was over.

But no one knows what went on that day inside 553. No one knows about the epic struggle that was played out until its sweet end.

Why isn't there a sign on that gray door, or better yet, a different plaque entirely explaining to the public that there is no such thing as love even if there is such a thing as Jules, and then my name at the bottom to give credit? That's all it would've had to say. "553 MEN It'll kill you."


§ § §

Michael Davidson spends his time writing and reading in Miami, Florida.

This is his first published story. He can be reached at: herocious@hotmail.com .

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