Part 1: On the First Day

By Michael Lawrence

Steven always had a shy bladder. He stood in front of the school's thirsty urinal, wanger hanging out, with a marked look of desperation plastered on his face. His bladder was so full that it ached, and yet he couldn't muster up the ability to actually pee. There was only two minutes left in the passing period; he didn't have much time.
There must have been 20 people in that bathroom. He was listening, over intensely, to their shoes pattering against the floor's linoleum; toilets were flushing and faucets were gushing all around him. He knew that none of them could possibly be watching him (unless they were mental), but he couldn't quite extinguish that nagging, slightly unconscious fear. After all, he was standing in public with his wanger hanging out in an unfamiliar place, and he didn't know who these people were and what they were capable of.
Still without success, Steven issued a demanding though silent order to his wanger. He told it that the brain greatly outranks the wiener, and how dare it defile its authority! But it didn't work. Then, he reasoned with it. He told it that had to go really, really bad, and he was in the correct place and position. It just had to release. But, as he was aware for some years, logic doesn't work on a shy bladder. The only way his sphincter would open and release the urine held hostage would be for the room to be completely empty. Then he tried to force it out. His face turned a pinkish shade as he held his breath and closed his eyes, forcing his bladder to open that stubborn sphincter for just a little bit. He succeeded in making a tiny trickle come out, but it didn't accomplish anything. He still had to pee really bad and his bladder hurt more than ever, now throbbing with excruciating pain.
A 250-pound jock wearing one of those cheesy though oddly authoritative school jackets moseyed to the urinal stall next to him. He grunted and spat into the urinal before loudly unzipping his fly. A second passes, and Steven could hear a steady, hard gush against the urinal wall, which was splashing everywhere. A micro-droplet of it splattered on Steven's cheek, and he grimaced sourly as he wiped it off with his wrist. Yuck!
It was completely useless. Defeated, he tucked away his failed organ, re-zipped his fly, and flushed the toilet in shame. His ballooned bladder ached with every step as he crept to the sink to wash his hands. He was thinking that should have washed his hands with all that orange juice and milk he drank before going to school that morning instead of ingesting it. What possessed him to drink so much liquid before his first day of high school? He must have been mad. For now on, no more liquid. Ever. It'd be better to die of thirst. He glanced at his wristwatch to mark the exact time he made this life-changing proclamation.

~*~

The third period Biology teacher seemed like a complete douche-bag at the start, but he turned into Steven's savior from heaven above as soon as he issued him a five-minute bathroom pass. It was just a handwritten note on a loose-leaf paper, but Steven could swear that it absolutely glimmered under the glow of the classroom's buzzing fluorescent lights. He was positive that this document he clutched in his hand was more holy than the Ten Commandments etched in stone by God himself. It was the best thing that ever happened to him. At least, he couldn't think of anything nicer at the time.
His bladder ached so much now that he could only waddle in half-steps down the school's hallways to toward the seemingly distant boy's restroom. Now that the bathroom would be fairly empty, he should be able to finally relieve this ache, but it ain't over until the fat wanger sings (so to speak).

To his great relief, the bathroom was empty. He decided to use one of those private, sit-down toilets reserved for number-twos just in case someone should come in and disrupt his sensitive stream of consciousness again. In those private stalls, he knew that no one would be watching him, and he could release it in peace. Granted, he didn't know what sort of terrible diseases were creeping all around on this school's toilet seats, but he could contract hepatitis B for all he cared. He just had to pee.
He was glad he did that, because someone stormed into the bathroom as soon as Steven sat down. Unfortunately, he had to do a real number two. He slammed open the bathroom stall adjacent to Steven's, and then slammed it shut, shaking the entire row of stall patricians. Not ten seconds later, a disgusting symphony of farting, splashing, and groaning emitted from this toilet stall, which was capped by an odor most foul. The disgusting noises and smell was terrible enough, but the groaning and grunting took it too far, Steven thought.
He realized that it's no one's fault that bowel movements make disgusting sounds and produces a repulsive smell (except he felt that people, as a whole, probably don't need to be consuming bean burritos as much as they do), but there's just no excuse for these obnoxious bathroom noises. This man should die miserably, Steven thought.
As Steven was silently complaining about his bathroom-mate, his nervous unconscious hold on his sphincter was distracted enough for it to finally relax, and the hostage urine was finally being released. And it felt like Shangri-La. Complete heaven. He was experiencing the sun for the first time. His bladder was finally deflating, and it was warmer than a mother's love, and it felt softer than swimming in a sea of young downy feathers. The farts, groaning and splashing from the stall next to him had morphed into happy birds tweeting, fairies singing, and dainty frogs dancing across lily pads. Steven breathed in the air with intense vigor, for that once pungent odor was now like cool, springtime air after an afternoon drizzle with the scent of flowers blooming for the first time amongst wafts of freshly mowed grass. This was a beautiful moment for him. Probably the most beautiful moment that he ever experienced.
But when the pleasures of peeing had worn off, and the final molecule of urine had retreated from his bladder, things were no longer looking rosy. The person in the stall next to him was now violently rattling the toilet paper dispenser, and he remembered that the springtime air was actually really repulsive. Much more repulsive than it had been before. It was like an acid eating at his lungs and nostril.
Steven held his breath, not daring to breathe, and he wondered if he could get out of there before he started to turn blue. He flushed the toilet and bolted out of the stall as though someone had just thrown a live hand grenade in it. He ran to the sinks and wash his hands quickly, not even bothering to dry them off. (He could wipe them on his shirt as soon as he's safely in the hall). But as soon as he turned around to make his final exit, the boy who had been crapping in the stall next to him amazingly managed to flush the toilet and swing open the stall door at the same time. And before Steven could take another step, he was staring face to face with him. He had been profusely sweating, he was slightly cross-eyed, and he was biting his tongue.
That should have been a nightmarish moment of intense awkwardness for Steven, but it wasn't. Instead, it turned into a moment of overwhelming joy. Steven knew this guy. They were best friends in the fourth grade, and his name was Justin Wenz. He was a very cool guy!

Justin looked and acted retarded, but he wasn't really. As a matter of fact, he was an exceptionally bright kid with intellect that was well beyond his years, but people were expecting too much out of him. Justin's decision to act retarded was one that was deliberately calculated. It was in front of Steven that Justin perfected his slurring and lisping 'retarded' voice; Steven suggested that there should be more spit when he spoke.
However, Steven had no idea that Justin was considering adopting this persona permanently, and he was upset when Justin's parents pulled him out of school to get private help. They were no longer allowed to see each other, and Steven still hadn't completely gotten over that. But now they were reunited at last, and it was in a smelly boys' bathroom.
“Stheven!!” Justin gleefully exclaimed with his lisp and drawl, which sounded more authentically retarded than ever. There was intense joy in his eyes.

~*~

When Steven woke up that morning, he had no idea that he would spend lunch dining with his long-lost friend Justin who spent the last five years of his life pretending that he was retarded. What's more, Justin had a really weird friend. His name was Voltar, and he was from the future. Or so he said. The three of them were seated under the stairwell next to the sculpture room.
Steven had spent the last five minutes staring at these two, saying nothing. He had a pizza square in front of him, but he didn't touch it. Not that it mattered. It tasted like nothing, anyway. The mozzarella cheese with the same taste and consistency as melted plastic, and the tomato sauce was made out of glue, water, and red dye. (Only the American public school system knows how to make these glorious things.)
Justin was making a ruckus; Steven could see that he even had eating like a retard down to an art. He had slobbered all over a peanut butter sandwich before he stuffed it in his mouth, leaving massive globs of it all over his lips and the sides of his mouth.
“I sthill got summa lef!” Justin bellowed with a mouth full of sandwich, some of which glopped out and fell into his lap. He chewed profusely and swallowed before licking some of the globs off his lips and then picking up that chunk of masticated sandwich from his lap and reinserting it in his mouth. Steven would have been totally disgusted at this display if he didn't know that Justin was a completely cool guy.
But Steven had no idea what to make of Voltar. He was a skinny, pimply kid who never blinked much, and all he had for lunch was a pint of white milk that he was sucking through his nose with a straw.
“Just wait till you see what he does with tuna,” Voltar said to Steven in a sort of distant drawl. He inserted the straw in his nose to take another snort. Some of it dripped down to his lip, which he wiped away with his sleeve.
Steven figured he ought to start some sort of real conversation, if nothing else to figure out what the deal was with 'Voltar.' He knew that Justin was pretty much faking it, but there might actually be something wrong with Voltar.
“So, how did you two meet?” Steven asked them. He remembered that he had that pizza square in front of him, and he took a bite of it. Sure enough, it tasted like nothing. Old faithful!
“I live in Justin's house exactly two centuries from now,” Voltar slurred, barely moving his lips. “That was back when the house had bathtubs.”
“Bathhsz!!” Justin happily snorted, spraying droplets of peanut-butter-saliva all over the stairwell. But his happy expression quickly turned to a sour one. “Heyyy! I hattttte bathhsz!!”
Voltar consoled his friend with lazy and halfhearted body language, but he was speaking from the heart.
“Don't worry, my friend. People stopped taking baths in 2043. That's not too long from now, really,” Voltar said to him, sounding like he was about to nod off. Voltar then made eye-contact with Steven. “In the future, we just put mousse in our hair.” Moving like a three-toed sloth, Voltar brought his fist to his head and knocked on it thrice. It was so overloaded with mousse that it was more solid than ivory.
Steven snickered, and asked a useless question.
“Are you for real?”
Voltar slowly turned his head to meet Steven squarely in the eyes.
“Look around the room,” he said ominously in that creepy drawl. “None of this is real. We're just knickknacks in some dead guy's imagination. Make no mistake about it.”

Steven didn't say anything else, because he didn't need to. He never met two guys who were more completely out of it, and he couldn't possibly be happier. He wagered this was even better than relieving an aching bladder, and that had been pretty high on his list that day. He just finished his tasteless pizza and downed it with a 20-ounce Coke. Steven looked at his wristwatch. His no-liquid diet had officially lasted 85 minutes.
“I am a moderate success!” Steven cried. As it turned out, this was a good day. He could have started to sing right then and there. Nothing could have stopped him.