SoMa Literary Review

Stall

By Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

Theirs smelled like baby powder. Amazing. The prank probably started when I wrote Kathleen’s name inside the stall, the one I always use. “She” wasn’t alone in there. The typical men’s john had “call me for a good time” scrawled in one long form or another or political manifestos like “Fuck Bush”. Can’t leave out the Disney-like animations of gigantic cartoon cocks. It happened after my economics final. I went to my usual spot, exhausted, squatted, reached for a school paper crumpled in a corner. I looked up - Kathleen’s name was exed out with a black felt tip marker. Who else had a crush on the department head? All of a sudden, a surge, my name, hoots and howls, the pressure of the door kicked in. My buddies yanked me off the seat, dragged me down the hall, inserted me into the women’s lavatory, and booked. All I could do was slink in behind any door before some girl saw me standing in my Eddie Bauer briefs, looking betrayed and awfully pink. As I mulled options in my head, the whush of a flushing toilet surged, then settled. I double-checked the lock, pulled my knees to my chest (pale hairy-toed flip flopped feet would have blown my cover). I sat, eyes straight ahead as I plotted my plan to get out of there. That’s when it hit me. Shit, it was so clean. Not one mark.

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson is a poet and visual artist living in San Francisco. Although he is a native Californian, his legal separation from Los Angeles became final in the late eighties.