There were all the thousand things and one thing that happened, and then I needed to pee.
I locate the rest room door in the dorm hallway. It looks just like every other door in the hallway and is distinguishable from bedroom doors only by its lacking a numeral-bearing plaque. But the visual only confirms its identity since I know perfectly well it’s the third door on the left after the hallway turns left. The combination lock is somehow simultaneously (a) five little metal pushbuttons in a vertical row numbered 1 through 5, on which the combination is 1-2-1-3; and (b) a 9- or 10-button phone array, on which the combination is either 3-2-3-4 or 9-8-9-4. While this lock had given me grief on my last visit…
(that time
late at night when I noticed that the wall of urinals is perforated, or
pergolated, or whatever the architectural term is: there are foot-wide strips
of wall interrupted by foot-wide strips of nothing that look out into the
garden and the street; and while I was there some passing headlamps accidentally—at
first!—illuminated my pissing cock; I mean, sure, the urinal is on this strip
of wall but why not just lean out here to piss in the garden where both
streetlamps and headlamps can show me just how fucking fine and fat and
beautiful my cock is oh fuck it’s so beautiful and now it’s done pissing it definitely
deserves desires commands some stroking)
…but
this time the combo that I remember works perfectly and lets me into… another
bedroom? Wait. There are two double beds in here. They look exactly like the
beds in every other room on the floor. But they are strewn carelessly (and have
no linens) as if just tossed in here. Are they in the process of turning this
bathroom into a sleeping room?
I go to
the administrative offices to find out. It looks like a DMV or customs. I have
an acquaintance who has some official law or regulatory enforcement capacity as
a guide; she points me to the right counter. When I have someone’s attention I
describe the bathroom in question with geographic specificity. The returned promise
to investigate is obligatory and unsatisfying. I move away from the counter but
it’s a labyrinth to get out of here. I get into a little dead end where there’s
a machine that has printed an extra travel pass for someone else who neglected
to tear it off its perforation and take it. ‘Of course you can’t take
that,’ my guide says, with some regret on my behalf; a few moments later we
pass a filing cabinet on which various tickets of a different type are lying
about, apparently discarded; and my guide is quick to advise there would be nothing
illegal or unethical about taking one of these, which would come mightily
in handy were I apt to gae McGuffining.
I go
back to the dorm, but the hallway is now a shopping mall or boardwalk and the door
to the dysphoric bathroom is now inconspicuous between two garish food stalls.
My three buddies and I are watching some drama unfold while we wait to order something
at—oh, let’s call it Red’s, an establishment with both a fast-fried-food
counter and a convenience store. It’s not soap-opera clear what’s going on, but
there’s a burly cishet male bully doing everything he can to make miserable the
lives of both his ostensible girlfriend and their coworker Randall, who may or
may not be the girlfriend’s sassy gay friend. My three buddies and I
agree we should do what we can to help out here—which, for better or worse, is engaging
Randall in a regular convenience store transaction… I guess to get him out of
the bully’s field of attention and allow him to be visible as a solid, competent
worker. So my three buddies nudge me to the counter to go first; only I don’t
really want anything and I’m blanking on what to ask for. As if to cue
me, someone behind the counter says, ‘Can I get some potchalk?’ Or
whatever the word was, denoting a well-known brand of snack. I guess it needs
restocked behind the counter, but for simplicity I repeat the sentence verbatim
as an order. While Randall is getting the potchalk, thinking I ought to order
one other thing, I notice bins of what I think are chewing gum, only it’s all tiny
fractal pieces of gum with a candy coating, like on gumballs. There is a
sticker on one of the bins telling me a serving is 3¢. I ask Randall: How is
this stuff apportioned? He tells me it’s in little bags. I ask for two. He gives
me merchandise and accepts legal tender. We are done.
I turn
around and my three buddies are nowhere in sight. I spend the next couple
minutes looking uselessly about the immediate vicinity—which is now a street
corner at night—while it slowly dawns on me I have been purposely ditched.
Thanks,
Robert Vincent Bumbera.
Heading
back to the dorm, I think various things in succession:
—I’ve
been abandoned by supposed friends again.
—I won’t
survive it this time.
