Midnight in the Bathroom of Good and Evil

Carol Bousselot, Olivia Hoff, John Watne

 

Heaving Off
Carol Bousselot

“I am NOT drunk,” I said with a hiccup.

My roommate about died laughing at that, which just pissed me off more. I wanted to heave her stupid religion textbook off my papasan and right at her face. Instead I glared at her while she tried to gulp down her last few giggles.

“Sorry,” Veronica said once she regained self-control. I kept glaring at her. Even her eyebrows pissed me off; the too-plucked look aggravated the hell out of me. I looked down at my furry slippers in an attempt to ignore her.

“Seriously, though. How many shots did you have,” she said, insinuating that I had been stealthily getting trashed. I drank when she was gone. Otherwise I had to deal with her ‘holier than thou’ baloney.

“You know what? It isn’t any of your damn business. How come you didn’t do the dishes before you left, anyways? They’re starting to reek. However many guys you were hitting on could’ve waited. And ANYWAYS it isn’t like I’m doing anything really illegal like YOU do. Frickin’ pothead,” I said, stomping to the CD player. I couldn’t deal with her frilly “Jesus saves” music right now.

I rummaged through my CDs, took her crap out and put in something I knew she hated—Rage Against the Machine. I made sure to set her CD silver side-down so it might get scratched. She noticed and stood up from where she had been picking lint balls off the carpet, hitting her head on the double loft and wincing.

“Just because I’m not a fucking slut like you, Linds—,” she started.

“Go to hell! I CAN‘T be a slut. I’ve only been with three guys, total. Unlike you, Veronica, I like to limit myself,” I said, rifling through the crap she had piled up by the mirror. Figured I should find some ammunition. She obviously wanted a war, and I wasn’t going to disappoint her.

“Fuck you! I’m still a virgin.”

“Yeah, but a slutty virgin. How many guys did you make out with tonight? You know, you can pick something up doing shit like— ,” I paused, finally finding where she had stashed her little Buddha bong.

“Maybe if you would stop pigging out—”

That was it. I threw the Buddha at her, hard. It ricocheted off her arm and bounced a few times on the carpet. She froze, her face turning bright red. I ran out, slamming the door as she started for me, yelling obscenities.

The hall was empty as I barreled down the hollow-sounding corridor. I heard her slow down behind me, so I came to a halt after turning the corner. I stood outside of the bathroom, panting mostly out of anger. I heard her go back towards the room, probably to check on her bong’s condition.

I felt like screaming. Instead I went into the bathroom to hide out for a while, pushing the heavy wooden door open really hard and slamming it against the wall. I watched myself head towards the mirror behind the row of white sinks. Over the shuffling of my slippers I thought I heard someone, so I paused. The bathroom was freezing as usual.

“Hello, is anyone there?” I asked.

Nobody responded so I peered into the mirror. My cheeks were pretty rosy from the booze and yelling. I wondered what I’d look like if I had red hair instead of brown. It’d take forever to grow out the coloring if I hated it, but it’d look pretty wild with my green eyes.

Someone was making a retching noise over by the toilets. I laughed a little. Then the volume of the vomiting doubled, only a bit higher pitched.

I shuffled to where the stalls were. There was a guy there, praying to the porcelain god and barely holding onto the side of the stall. I could hear a girl in the next stall, puking along with the guy, but she had the door closed.

“Hey, are you two okay?” I asked. The guy jumped.

“I think you’re in the wrong—,” he started, turning and standing up clumsily. He teetered there, staring at me with huge, glazed-over eyes. Skittles were stuck to his knees. He started stumbling so I moved and let him by, watched him waver out.

When I finally went back to my room, the drunk guy was talking to Veronica. Apparently he needed to spend the night. I decided I needed to move out. Soon.

 

Bathroom Binge
Olivia Hoff

Amelia pushed through the heavy bathroom door and stopped halfway through the entrance. A wave of cherry air freshener invaded her nose and made her stomach churn. She crept past the sinks and around the partial wall that separated the entrance from the toilet stalls and the urinals. She’d been told that her residence hall had once been an all-male dorm, and the urinals had not been removed after the conversion to co-ed living. Still, they unnerved Amelia each time she saw them.

Slowly, Amelia crept to the far end of the room, crouching down and peering under each of the stalls as she went. All clear.

Locking herself into the farthest stall, Amelia quietly opened her backpack. Inside was an array of junk food: cheese puffs, chocolate bars, Skittles, Oreos, Swiss Cake Rolls, and her favorite—Marshmallow Fluff. The sight of the food made her heart race, and she sat on the toilet and ripped into the Oreos first. She crammed cookie upon cookie into her mouth. The crumbs gathered like an army of ants on her flannel pajamas.

With each cookie that passed her lips, her anxiety flew further and further from her mind. Gulp! There went the hours of flipping through flashcards on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Gulp! Goodbye to the fifty pages of notes on African American literature.

Amelia smiled as she ripped into the one-pound bag of Skittles. Her pulse swam as she scooped a handful of the colorful candies into her mouth, pausing only for a moment when the fruit juices collided with the chocolate still lingering from the Oreos. So long to the fear of failing every final this semester. Another handful forced her mother’s nagging voice to fall to an inaudible whisper. Another and it faded out completely.

The Marshmallow Fluff was next. Amelia unscrewed the top and dove in with her whole hand. Just as her hand plunged into the jar, the main door to the restroom opened. Her heart felt as if it would burst out of her chest as she tried to remain perfectly still, the white goo halfway to her open mouth. She held her breath and her eyes darted to the lock on the door. Safe. But her heart still raced.

Amelia looked down at her lap. Cookie crumbs and candy pieces made a collage of color on her knees. The sticky fluff in her hand plopped down to join the mess. A tear ran silently down her cheek.

Amelia’s stomach flipped and churned. Standing up, the crumbs and candy debris fell to the floor. Skittles escaped her stall and rolled in all directions. She couldn’t stop it from coming. Over her own retching noise, she heard the door on the stall next to her bang shut and someone making horrible retching noises. With tears flowing freely down her face, Amelia couldn’t make herself stop, despite the sounds coming from next door.

After a few moments, her stomach empty, she stopped. The undeniable sound of vomit splashing into a porcelain pool continued to fill the whole room, echoing off the cement and steel. Amelia choked at the sound and her body convulsed with dry heaves of disgust.

“ Hey, are you two okay?” a girl’s voice called out.

Amelia’s puking companion stumbled out of the stall, while she pressed her back to the door, hoping that no one would be able to see her through the gaps.

“Umm…I think you’re in the wrong…” a male voice started. He sounded drunk. Maybe he was thrown off by the urinals. Maybe whoever else was in the bathroom would think that she was just puking because she was drunk, too. It was finals week after all.

Amelia relaxed a little and repositioned herself on the toilet to wait until the coast was clear. Then she could creep back downstairs to her room on the third floor and get back to her studying. Just two more tests to go.

 

The Drunk Will Walk the Earth
John Watne

Jason thought this night had been turning out so well, too. He stumbled around the fourth floor of the dorm mindlessly, his emotions twisting along the same roller coaster that his stomach was riding.

What had happened that had turned this around? The night had been going awesome for Jason. Caroline had called him that night, the Wednesday of finals week wanting to smoke it up, as a sort of celebration for finals week being nearly over. Jason met her and her other friend Veronica in her room on the third floor of her dormitory. After the three of them cheefed a bowl (shoving a towel under the door so her bastard RA wouldn’t suspect anything), Veronica got up from the couch. She said she needed to go see what her “drunkass” roommate was doing and left, but not without shooting Jason an interesting look. He was immediately distracted by Caroline throwing him a beer after that and had no more time to think about it. He knew tonight was going to be a good old time.

He gazed groggily at the sign on the door he found himself standing in front of at the end of the fourth floor hall; he was roughly sure it was a bathroom. Jason started thinking about how this night had gone south quickly, and his mind kept coming back to the last beer he had cracked open. They were both pretty toasted at that point, roughly seven minutes (or maybe seven years) ago, and, as Caroline handed him the last Busch Light of the evening, her hand briefly touched his, her soft pale skin feeling sweet and somehow cool to him. That’s really what did it. Caroline had been one of Jason’s best friends throughout his three and a half years of college, someone he could always count on to do disastrous things to their bodies…and all that had been on my mind tonight was how I could bone her. What the fuck…?

Jason shoved open the door to the only place he could think to go to after Caroline had tossed him out of her room. The tan brick wall reflected fluorescent light all over porcelain. It had started so honestly, too…like how a dream starts nice and goes to hell in a hand basket. He had put her arm around her and she seemed a little resistant at first but ok with it nevertheless. Trouble was Jason wasn’t content at all; his hands seemed to always become brave explorers when he was wasted.

He gazed slowly over to his right and saw some urinals, and the realization that he had made it into the right bathroom was interrupted by a thought much more important. Jason stumbled around what looked like a type of dividing wall separating the urinals from the other side and came upon a pallid greenish stall door. He opened it up and let fly, not giving two shits if anyone could hear how disgusting he always sounded when he puked. When it was all over, he was glad he couldn’t see himself in this state. Throwing up usually sobers up a man just a tad, and all Jason could think about was how much of an asshole he was around women when he got drunk.

“Hello, is anyone there?” Jason practically jumped into the air as the sound of a girl’s voice came spiraling acoustically through the bathroom. He threw open the stall door only to find himself looking into her eyes as she came around the corner. She was rather tall. Her auburn brown hair rolled down her hair in little strands. Her eyes were a dark green that reflected the fluorescents. “Hey, are you two okay?” she asked.

“Umm…I think you’re in the wrong…” Jason was sure he slurred the whole thing, because she gave him some disparaging look. Before she could say anything else, he turned and staggered out the bathroom door behind him. Once he had got a little ways down the hall he began to think about what to do. He remembered Veronica, and thought once more of the look she had shot him with her bloodshot eyes as she left Caroline’s room. Jason was pretty sure she lived on this floor. I wonder if she’d have a place to crash, he thought as he ambled down the hallway, trying to recollect which room was hers, and hoping her roommate wouldn’t be around.