Sudsy Penguins
You wake up on the toilet staring at your dick. You’re naked but you think that’s not so bad because your roommate usually stays at his girlfriend’s house and, even if he’s not there tonight, he drinks as much as you do. You’ll have to walk into the living room and through the kitchen to get to the stairs of your shitty basement room, but if you do it fast he might not see your naked ass. Even if he does, you’ll only get shit about it for a week or two.
You’re embarrassed, but think you can deal with it. Then you see the fucking penguins on the shower curtain. They all have little sunglasses and shower caps on and they are all in different stages of sudding up. Cute, but you don’t have a shower curtain like that. You don’t have tile on the walls and the pattern on the linoleum floor is completely different. This place is cleaner and has girl-shit like conditioner and colored bar soap and clean towels hanging neatly.
What the fuck did you do? Look left, look right, and there are absolutely no clothes in this small strange bathroom.
Some of it comes back: the barbeque at the house. Your roommates laughed while you drank heavily and struck out one at a time with three different girls. You stood on the porch smoking a cigarette and watched the third girl drive off and then the across-the-road neighbor came home, the neighbor your inflated ego thought you always had a chance with because she was polite. You invited her to your place and she said she’d eat a hotdog and have some of your whiskey. You took this as flirting.
You stand up and your feet and calves are tingling. How long have you been sitting on the toilet? There’s no way of knowing because your cell phone is probably in your pants somewhere else.
You try to remember more. Those first memories had been blocking the flow and now they’re out. The rest come flowing faster than you can comprehend: leaning into her at the party, she inviting you over to her house, you grabbing her ass on the way over, her unsure smile. She unlocked her door, a big fucking dog jumped up, and then the two of you kissed way too clumsily. Neither of you could get the rhythm, but for some reason you thought you were doing well.
You said some shitty pick up line about fucking that wasn’t anywhere as witty or clever as you believed it to be. Fuck, then she said she couldn’t go through with lay-down sex, but she may be okay with giving a blowjob because that wasn’t really cheating on this guy she met at Stumptown and went on two dates with, the last one at a classy Thai place, talking about how they both own some obscure folk singer’s bluegrass album.
Always the gentleman, you had done your best to apologize for how the situation ran out of control and you told her that you completely respect how she felt, but she may have questioned your sincerity since you were naked except for a pair of dirty white socks and your erect penis bobbing along with your heartbeat.
There was no way to tell if she decided to forget the coffee shop bluegrass guy or if she just felt obligated to follow through with the blowjob when she dropped on her knees and put the head of your dick in her mouth.
This conflicted you deeply.
The whole thing was… some sort of moral dilemma… that may have required… much thought.
You felt you did the right thing and stopped her. Because, honestly, you wouldn’t have been able to finish, and the longer a girl blows you the guiltier you feel. It was just the way you were raised.
She stood up and looked at you swaying there all naked and shit. The look in her eyes said a deep conversation may start any second and this begins when she tells you that she may have had a little bit too much to drink. You burped and tasted vomit. Her eyes filled with tears and she asked you if you think she should tell coffee-shop, bluegrass guy that she gave her neighbor half a blowjob.
Words escaped you, but in your head you thought that she shouldn’t.
He may think she can’t commit.
He may think she’s a quitter.
Instead of telling her this you excused yourself politely and told her in a very pleasant tone that you had to drop a deuce.
Now you’re caught up on the situation, looking at yourself in your across-the-street neighbor’s bright bathroom mirror with the sudsy penguins framing your face. You’re such a good-looking failure, but the mileage from the booze is pulling, drowning your soul. Maybe you should get your life together. Maybe if you didn’t spend all day and night drinking cheap alcohol you could do something, something great. Maybe if you were able to scratch together five minutes of discipline you could change things. Maybe you could hang out in coffee shops and talk to girls about your vinyl collection. Shit, maybe you could actually buy a vinyl collection. Maybe you wouldn’t find yourself in fucked up positions like this. This isn’t the first time. Last month you woke up next to an orange-haired stripper with fangs. Honest to God, she had fangs because her uncle was a dentist. You woke up next to an orange-haired stripper with fangs you didn’t remember picking up and you had shit yourself.
You slap your face hard. Real hard. And you feel each little whisker when you let that palm drag down and off your chin. Fucking sudsy penguins.
Sean Davis paints, writes, and makes bad short films with his friends in Portland, Oregon. He served most my adult life in the Army Infantry, but after being injured in the Iraq War he left to become an artist, writer, and teacher. Sean has an EIB, CIB, a Purple Heart, and a Masters Degree in Fiction from Pacific University. His memoir The Wax Bullet War is being published by Ooligan Press and will be out Spring 2014.