My Life

When you sign your lease agreement to live in a dorm, it is understood that in doing so, you are giving away every trace of personal space and privacy that you have. I guess I don’t have a ton of room to complain considering I’m coming to school here on a full-ride scholarship, but regardless, this loss of privacy hit me fairly hard in the past few days.

So you no longer have your own bedroom. Fine. You learn how to deal with it and it is fully understood when you come. Nothing that you do is done alone. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. Wanna eat dinner alone? Not going to happen. Before you know it you’ll be bombarded with new people who all think that you’re lonely. Fine. I can deal with it. One thing I didn’t know I signed up for, as I’m sure you can infer from the title, is not having the privacy to shit in peace.

Upon arrival, I was fairly weary of public bathrooms. Everytime that I sit down on a toilet, touch a handle, or open a door, I can’t help but think of the hundreds of people who have came in here, done their business, got it all over their hands and decided they didn’t need to wash their hands. Until recently, I didn’t understand how few of people wash their hands in bathrooms. I’m not going to preach to you or anything, do what you want, but just for the record it’s fucking disgusting.

When I go into a bathroom, it is my time. I don’t like to rush it, I like to let my body do its thing at its own pace. I bring a book sometimes, other times I play Tetris on my cell phone, but I never just rush in and rush out. So, when I sit down, I don’t expect to be bothered.

The stalls are set up three in line, no urinals in the bathroom. I found comfort in the stall furthest to the right because I decided that the fewest number of people would go there. So I sit, and at first, it was fine.

With three stalls, one occupied in the corner, and two open, which one do you sit in? If you said the one directly next to the occupied stall, you deserve to have your eyes gouged out and fingernails ripped out. What the fuck is wrong with people? When I’m sitting down for my alone time, I don’t want to have some 18 year old kid sitting so close to me that I can hear his painful grunts followed by moans of pleasure. It’s a personal thing, get away from me! I don’t care who you are, it’s one of the most awkward moments in your life when you can see the persons feet, you hear them struggling as if they’re fighting with something inside of themselves, their feet lift off the floor, you hear a “splooosh,” and then they begin rapidly breathing as if they just ran a mile. How am I supposed to enjoy my alone time next to that?

So, I decided that I’d just figure out when the off times for the bathroom were and go then. Right? Wrong. It doesn’t work like that. I’ve tried it all… 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, it doesn’t matter. Someone is always in their stall shitting on my parade, literally. And what’s even worse, they ALWAYS take the stall next to me.

So this had all built up inside of me for the past few weeks, and I began to understand why people shoot up schools. It’s for this. When they’re shooting around they think of all the inconsiderate people who just shit wherever they please regardless of who is two and a half feet away from them.

So as I began to grow sort of accustomed to it, or at the very least accepting, it got worse.

I’m sitting my stall, doing my business, and it was going fairly well. A few guys came in and pee’d in the stall next to me, left without washing, but I’ve grown to ignore it. I was content with my shitting enviroment. Then, of all people, a group of girls walk in.

Seriously, what the fuck man? It clearly says “Men” on the door, and for those of us who can’t read it has a handy little picture. There is a women’s bathroom like 30 feet down the hallway, but an endless swarm of them begin coming into this one. It was like an army of people dedicated to making me feel as strange as possible. Two come and sit down on their chosen toilets, I see feet standing outside waiting in line and I’m too frightened to count. I heard noises coming from females which I never wanted to hear, and hope I never have to hear again. The feet lifts are not limited to males, neither are the grunts. So I sit, in utter disbelief, waiting for my time. Me, being the gentleman that I am, could not bring myself to let anything go; they were not so kind. One sits down, and lets out a stream of pee that lasted for what seemed like minutes. Not only was it flowing, but I if I closed my eyes it sounded like there was a firehose next to me. What kind of a human waits to pee so long that it shoots out of your organs like niagra fucking falls? Just as I thought this couldn’t get any worse, one of her friends says, “wow Jamie, you really had to go!”

So one after another, they took their turns publicly shattering any sex drive I had for the night.So I waited till they left, quietly finished my business, washed my hands, and walked to my room with a look of absolute terror.

My advice is simple…

The “Men’s” sign on the door is not a suggestion. And if you’re on my dorm floor,  just let me fucking shit in peace. 

I stumble down the path, one foot in front of the next trying to find my way home. I realize that I don’t know where that is, but my feet continue moving, searching for a place that doesn’t exist. I’m lost.

I watch as a girl walks by me. She’s wearing short jean shorts with bright red cowboy boots. I glance down at my watch, it’s 1:22AM. She glances back at me in fear, I try to imagine what is going on in her head. She’s terrified that I’m going to follow her. Her hand reaches into her purse and she puts a crooked finger on her can of pepper spray and prays to an unresponsive God that I won’t touch her. She sees that I’m still walking in the opposite direction and loosens her grip. I bet she won’t let go completely until she walks into her bedroom. I look at my reflection in the glass on the building to the right of me. I’m wearing tight girl jeans with a bright purple shirt. “So this is what all of the murderers and rapers wear nowadays,”I think to myself. I begin to understand her paranoia.

I look toward the trees and wonder how they came about. A small seed planted into the soil, over time it grows bigger and bigger branching off into a new direction with each passing day. What are those branches reaching for? Answers? I stop walking, reach up toward the sky mimicking the tree, searching for the answers I know won’t come. I look back at the tree in pity and wonder how long it has been waiting like that, in that exact pose.

I look back toward a building. It amazes me that something so big comes from the thoughts of an individual man. It makes me smile to think that something can make me feel so big, yet so small at the same time. The building towers above my head, it’s at least 15 stories tall. I stand next to the pillars which support it, the pillars which hold it up and ensure that it doesn’t collapse. “Why don’t I have pillars?” I wonder in my head, “I’m more likely to fall apart than that building is.”

My feet continue to walk, I wonder where they are going. I walk into my dorm building, enter my room, and sit on my bed. I still feel lost. How can one feel lost in the only place they have ever truly considered home? I look out my window and watch the people staggering back to their rooms from parties. I wonder if they feel lost too.

I look next to me on my bed. I wish I had somebody there; someone to hold, to feel, to love. I think of the last girl who was lying there and wonder where she went and why she left. I begin to wonder if I scared her away.

I look out my window and see a group of flowers underneath the street light. I see myself in them. Spring comes every year and they bloom for the earth; showing off their beauty and making love to the spring air. With no warning winter comes, murdering the flower and every ounce of passion left inside of its wilting petals. It freezes, too broken to cry and too dead to move. But still, it sits around and waits.

Spring comes again, and without hesitation it blooms just the same as it did the last year. So fragile and so full of hope, so eager and so slow to learn.

When will the winters stop coming?