The door opens.
“Oh, fuck.”Stanley.“Shit. Shit, I’m sorry —”
I tuck my dick into my pants like a man being arrested at the scene of a crime. My zipper grabs. My face is doing something I can feel without having to see it. My balls have, in the past two seconds, shrunk back into my body like they’re trying to get away from him too.
“What thehell, man?”
Stanley’s shit-eating grin arrives before the rest of his face does. He looks down. I turn my body to hide my crotch. He looks back up. He looks at the toilet, which I’m standing in front of. He looks at me.
He says, with the same deadpan he uses when he’s commenting on hockey —
“Were you just pulling your dick?”
“What?”
“Were you just pulling your dick?”
“Get the fuck out, Stan.”
“No, dude.” He holds up both hands like a man pleading innocence. “I just need to understand. Who jacks off over a toilet?”
“Keep it the fuck down.”
“So youwerepulling your dick.”
“Stan.”
“This is fascinating, Blue. This is actually fascinating to me. You go to bed in the middle of a party last night —”
“Stanley.”
“ — and now I catch you, in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekend, the Lord’s day of rest, jerking it into a toilet bowl —”
“It’s not the Lord’s day —”
“ — like a fucking nineteenth-century farmhand —”
“Stan.”
“Tell me one thing.”
I glare at him.
He folds his hands in front of him like a priest. “Tell me, Blue. As your roommate. As your friend. As a man who has just borne witness to something he can’t unsee. What does jerking off into a toilet accomplish? I’m not — I’m not judging you, baby Blue. I just want to understand the logistics. Is it a clean-up thing? Is it a vibe?”
“I’m going to bulldoze you.”
“You can’t bulldoze me. You’ve got dick hands.”
“Move.”
“I genuinely can’t let you out of this bathroom with dick hands —”
I step.
“Ah!” He bolts backward into the hallway. “Dick hands, dick hands, fuck —Cap!—”
“Ermington,” I growl.
