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Description
Sweet Chastity
The hallway of the dormitories smelled like stale popcorn, the odd lingering smell of post pubescent sweat (both from sexual exertion and the vigorous attempts to avoid the dreaded Freshman Fifteen of college lore), and that pheromone smell of teenagers freshly released from tight domestication. I imagined that the famed bath houses of Ancient Rome smelled the same, minus of course the smell of the packaged preservatives that were stewed in microwaves and consumed in mass amounts. Walking through the hallways and past the numbered doors was like walking through a zoo, but for the opposite kind of spectacle. Walking softly on the balls and heels of your feet you paused by each door and could admire, not the animals in the cages, but the sounds. Walk late enough and you’ll hear moans or two. During the day it’s the tapping of keyboards and the giggles of girls, the occasional unanimous grunt of men in reaction to some sports game on TV. Instead of viewing the specimens here, you would listen to them through the closed fire proof doors. Walking on the modern pattern of the carpet with squat, cushy chairs and chaise lounges placed in corners to make it feel like home. To me, it looked like The Shining. Sometimes, on my late night strolls, I’d swear I heard the squeak of tricycle pedals.

Then I found myself in front of door 16. I’d passed it many times on my walks. It was unassuming, like every other door in the place. That cream white color made to placate the masses of hormone driven adolescents. The slightly curved silver handle, the brass number plate. The girls in this dorm must have been the crafty type. They had flicked through their fashion magazines and carefully pulled out the letters of their names and taped them to a piece of paper on the door. One said “Shannon” and one said “Darla”. I’d seen both of the girls enter this room, but I couldn’t tell you which one was which. I was outside this door because out of all of the doors I passed on my auditory safari, this room was by far the most interesting. I usually don’t pause too long at a door, although it’s weird to be seen pacing the hallways aimlessly, I’d rather not get the reputation for being the guy that stands poised at doorways enjoying coital noises.  But this door stopped me in my tracks. I heard screams coming from this room. Panicked type screams. Not the concerned scream of emergency, but the excited scream of enjoyment. Of course they were the muffled kind of screams that people make in dormitories. The controlling of a natural involuntary reaction, as to not cause embarrassment. In fact no one would have heard the screams, if they weren’t listening.

So I watched the door slyly and I started to see something strange. On the side of the sleek white board, under the side that said “Darla” in glossy letters handwriting kept appearing with similar messages “Dinner at 8?- Room 19” “Brunch Tomorrow -Room 23”.  The screams in the room were replaced with the faint hum of music being played. My hand moved slowly as if through water, and I carefully picked up the thin, black marker. I pulled the cap off slowly. I half expected the cap to float weightless if I let it go, But I held it tight in my hand and didn’t try this experiment. I put the exposed pen to the shiny surface of the market board and scrawled in a handwriting not my own. “Let’s do Lunch- Room 27”, I replaced the lid and slid the marker back into it’s little grooved holder with a slight click. I walked away slowly, my knees feeling stiff and then after a few steps I heard the soft mechanism of the door being opened and a girl in jeans and a black t-shirt came out and read what I wrote. She had a little frame, her hips and rib cage seemed to be carved of wood. They stood out proud and jagged. A mop of shiny brunette curls hung gracefully from her head and touched her shoulders, they moved as she moved, amplifying her every step or nod. She wasn’t immediately radiant, but she had a certain charm to her, a soft and quiet presence, but she seemed the kind of person that you would barely noticed but never forget.

She turned around to see me standing there and she smiled and then jerked her head to the board, to ask if I wrote it. I nodded slowly, stupefied. She smiled wider, winked, and said “Thursday at nine”. I nodded again and felt that my leaden head would fall to the floor. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before”. I stammered a “No” and a frail “see you then”. “Okay, bye. See you then.” She turned gracefully, Erasing the message on the door with a graceful wave of her wrist. She disappeared almost magically behind the heavy door and softly pushed it shut. My heart thumped in my throat as I tried to think of what exactly I had just done. It was Tuesday now, so I guessed I’d find out two days from now. I clamored up the stairs passing a gaggle of girls in bright colors cut in the latest fashions giggling about something and wafting their identical perfumes my way. I made it to door 27 and pulled the silver key out of the pocket in my wallet that it stayed in and forced the key into the standard issue silver handle. I walked into the room and thought for a second that I might get sick. “Yo dude! What’s up?.” Josh was sprawled casually on the wooden bed and flipping through some hot rod magazine.

“Not much, just walking.”
“People are going to think your crazy, man”
“Eh… they probably already do, this room just gets too small sometimes, you know. I mean no offence”
“Oh, I know what you mean. I’m not offended man, I didn’t make the rooms.”

Josh was a nice guy, with that build with the strong, proud, straight shoulders. The kind that I envied with my slight, pale frame. He spoke to me every time I entered the room and he would tell me the friendly, minute details of his life. Sometimes bringing a pretty blonde with a tiny waist home on his arm. “Calvin, I believe you’ve met Denise”, he’d say. Which was code for “Give me an hour, dude”. When he said this I would say “I have, hello Denise. I was just on my way out though. You two have a good time.” This is what started the walks around the dorms. The auditory safaris and the lingering pauses around or in front of room 16, turning corners and taking elaborate paths just to get back in front of that door. Thursday, Thursday , two days from now – I’d figure out what it all meant. It was like a secret code. It felt like I’d been putting my ear to a safe for months and I just now heard that click. I could finally open the little metal door and see if it was all worth it. I sat at my desk and stared blankly into highlighted textbooks, pretending to learn something.

Josh would always leave at about nine or ten o’clock at night and go to some meeting or party or friend’s house. And I would always sit in the dorm room with a book, my computer, and some stale potato chips. This is why it was best to walk at night. To hunt. The dorms were alive. The walls practically breathed and pulsed. Someone lived in each tiny compartment like a beehive. So chances were that if you walked through, you’d hear some buzzing. I tried not to be weird about it. I didn’t slink through the halls like a jungle cat, or lurk like some silent movie vampire. I strolled casually. I remembered the advice my mom would tell me before I went to any new place I was afraid of, “just act like you know what you’re doing. Act confident. And no one will questioned you.” I didn’t ham it up. I didn’t walk through the halls pausing at doors’ numbers, acting like I was looking for a certain location and was lost. I simply strolled like I was in between A and B and I was taking my time getting from one to the other. I’m sure some people wondered what I was doing and why they kept seeing me doing this same path nightly. But I doubt anyone ever thought anything of it. And I didn’t think anything of them. Sure I knew room 17 watched movies all the time and room 29 had an illegal blender. I knew that room 11 smoked pot through a paper towel tube and that in room 20, a boy and girl would fight furiously and then subside to moans. But I couldn’t tell you anything about the actual people living there. And I assumed that their habits were far from a complete description of them. In fact I hardly knew who lived in which room and paid no extra effort to figure it out. I guess that’s how I prevented myself from becoming creepy. I knew Darla and I knew Melanie and that was about it.

Melanie was a quiet mousy girl who could often be found on the chaise lounge reading or sketching something with a charcoal pencil that ended up smeared up her forearm. She lived in room 25, not too far from me. She, like me, inhabited the halls and got the occasional subtle look from a passerby. We’d smile shyly at each other and wave whenever we saw each other. One day she simply said “My roommate likes Death Metal”, a simple answer to an unasked question. She shrugged and added “I don’t mind her, but the music gives me a migraine. So I do my homework out here.”
“Oh, an art major”
“Uh-huh”, she smeared some charcoal around with a putty eraser.
“yeah my roommates probably having sex”
“Oh” She looked away slyly and then met my eyes again and smiled coyly under her long bangs before looking away again and going back to the pad of paper pressed into her cotton skirt.
That was the most Melanie and I ever talked. But we had that odd kind of bond. That quiet acquaintancy that comes from straying a little outside of the mainstream and finding someone else there. Melanie was the reason I didn’t feel like a creep and I was the reason that Melanie didn’t feel weird either. We were two people with right to not be doing with everyone else was doing and we thanked each other silently and humbly for that unintentional favor we’d done each other.

Wednesday slithered by like a long python, wrapping itself around me scale by scale. I sat through hazy lectures, scribbling notes and fading off occasionally to think of Darla and my appointment. I ate lunch and watched the activities of the green through the picture window as I absent mindedly ate one single pretzel after another, or took nibbles at my turkey sandwich. “Hey, Calvin. Can I eat with you”. I looked over to see blackened hands clutching a plastic tray. “Oh hey, Melanie. Of course. I was just zoning out”. Melanie forked sauce-less ravioli into her mouth as she sketched a doe eyed woman and attempted to make casual conversation. I smiled at her, watching her juggle these activities while I marched a slow parade of pretzels into my mouth. “Hey, Melanie. Why don’t you eat any sauce with your ravioli?” “Oh.” She slid one into her mouth then picked up the eraser and moved it across the girl’s hair line. “I always have to finish up a project at lunch, so I don’t eat anything that could drip and make a mess. Ravioli with out sauce was the most un messy think that they were serving today.”  I couldn’t help but admire her dedication and wish I knew how to bridge the gap between awkward lunch conversation and friendship.

Josh gave the signal again that night, so I resumed pacing. I wondered if Melanie would be on the chaise lounge again tonight. But room 25 lacked the pulse of a base line that usually indicated that she would be in the hallway. I paused at the hallway nook anyways, no Melanie. I considered going back to my room and getting a book and occupying the chaise lounge for a change. But decided to listen to what was up tonight. Wednesday is hump day, and the sounds from behind the doors usually served to reinforce the nick name. I walked down the concrete stairs again drawn as if magnetically to room 16. “Sweet 16”, I called it in the recesses of my mind as my ears pricked up involuntarily. I’d noticed something since Josh started dating Denise, my calf muscles were getting stronger, all the absent minded walking was doing something positive, so I stored “exercise” as an excuse in case anyone ever asked about my pacing. Three loud cracks accompanied by the same muffled moaning was what I heard at door 16. My heart jumped as I acknowledged the fact that I would be there tomorrow night to experience this symphony for myself. I decided to feel the fresh air and walked outside, a rarity for me. I looked up at all the other dormitories the awkward, uneven patterns of lights turned on and off and tried to imagine what was happening in all of the rooms. It wasn’t so much voyeurism as it was killing boredom. Voyeurs cared. I remained a distance of apathy except for my casual interest in Darla and her cacophonies.

Thursday morning, I felt like taking a lasso around the sun and jerking it forward through the sky. I wanted to make night fall as quickly as possible. Through classes I had steely focus and I tried repeatedly to push what was happening that night from my mind, fearing that anticipation would cause the day to go by even slower, like the casually heating pot that took forever to boil. At lunch I hoped Melanie would come by again so I could glance on to her light brown parchment paper and she would break the monotony and anxiousness of the day. But Melanie wasn’t there today, different schedule I guessed. At eight O’clock I paced nervously around the room. “Got a date dude?” inquired Josh from the same relaxed position on his bed.
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“All Right! Want some cologne or anything?”
“No thanks, I’ve already got some on.”
“So’s she cute?”
“Yeah she’s really pretty.”
“Score! Hey maybe you’ll need to use the code a few times soon”
The thought made me smile. “Yeah… maybe”
“Good luck, guy”, he said as I was walking out the door.
“Yeah, thanks!”

The floor by room 25 pulsed as I walked by and sure enough, Melanie was on the chaise lounge when I walked by. But her head was buried in her sketch book so I didn’t say anything, plus the idea of her seeing me nervous and wearing cologne embarrassed me for some reason. I walked past her and headed for the stairwell. For once I was actually going from point A to point B, but it didn’t feel casual like every other night when I was just pretending. It felt like lugging a ton of bricks in my gut. I got to room 16 as if by teleportation. I didn’t hear any sounds on my way there and I felt totally unprepared as my knuckles met the door. The knocking sounded like a movie theater’s surround sound and my heart echoed the pound. The door opening felt like a rug being pulled out from under me and I nearly fell over. Darla didn’t appear outside the door like she did last time, instead she was concealed behind the door. I walked in and caught a glimpse of “Dinner Saturday – Room 12” as I entered. The room smelt vaguely of perfume. It looked just like my room. The same checkered tile and furniture. I turned to see Darla backed against the door. And I knew immediately why she hadn’t come into the hallway. She was wearing a black satin corset and a pair of matching panties. Her legs bore a garter belt and her feet were clad in platform heels. Her hair had a slickness to it and her eyes were coated in black. Her lips were crimson and her breasts heaved enormous over the boning of the corset. “So…”, she said. “So”, I repeated not really knowing what to say. She smiled seductively.
“Lunch, eh?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m here for.”
She giggled and then walked delicately on the four to five inches of thick plastic beneath her feet.
“Lunch is twelve dollars”
I opened my wallet and fished for a ten and two wrinkled one dollar bills. I put it on her desk and then sat in her desk chair, identical to mine. She began to dig in her top dresser drawer. And I found myself wishing I would have taken the condom that Josh had offered me earlier, it would probably take her a while to find. As she dug through the drawer, I pulled at my shirt undoing each button as fast as I could. I put the shirt on the ground and then stood up and pulled furiously at the button on my Levis, I quickly unzipped them and then let them fall to my ankles as I pulled my shoes off the heel of one with the toe of the other, repeat. I pulled off my undershirt and put it in the same messy pile. I stood up and had my thumbs inside my boxer shorts, pulling them down slowly, as Darla turned around holding a pair of handcuffs and a small whip. We simultaneously let out a gasp of surprise.
“What, What are you doing?” she asked in shock.
“What are you, a sadist?”
“Well, Yes. Of course I am. Wait, what did you think I was? A….a…. prostitute?”, the last word came off as a barely audible whisper.
“I… I don’t know. I thought…. I just…. I don’t know.”
Darla stood there surprised and I rushed to put my clothes back on. Darla held the whip in handcuffs in her hand as if petrified and watched me unmoving.
“I guess I better go, you can keep the money. I’m sorry”
“Wait”, she said as I moved towards the door. She sat on the bed almost in slow motion and told me to come sit with her. I did. She took my hands and I thought about jerking them away from her, but then I remembered that I just almost paid her twelve dollars to touch me a lot more intimately than that.
“Why did you write that code on my door if you didn’t know what it meant?”
“I guess I thought I did”
“You thought I got paid to have sex with strangers?”
“You thought I wanted to get hit with a whip?” Neither of us were angry, just confused.
“Yes, I’m a dominatrix”
“What does your roommate think of this?”
Darla shrugged “She does it too sometimes.”
“How’d you get started doing this?”
“I wanted money, this seemed easy. That whip and handcuffs already paid for themselves. How’d you find out about me?”
“I…. heard you” I said bashfully.
Darla raised an eyebrow and parted her lips inquisitively.
“I get bored sometimes, or sometimes my roommate has his girlfriend over, you know. So I walk through the halls, because I have nothing to do. And I heard…. Sounds. Coming from your room”
“Oh! Is it that bad?”
“No, no don’t worry about it. It’s just that, I started walking the halls one day and realized that there were different things going on in every room, and so I’d kind of listen to see what I’d hear in each room.”
“Ever hear anything interesting?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard sex and arguments, that’s interesting I guess. But one night I heard, I guess it was your whip, and the moans. And then I saw the notes on your door for the different meals. And I, I didn’t really know what was going on. So I decided one day to just write a meal on the door and my room number and see what happened. I didn’t really think you were a prostitute or anything.”
Darla smiled. “It’s OK, you just surprised me. It started as a joke you know. I was talking with a big group of friends and I said I needed money and I’d open my own business. I said it’d be a restaurant. And you know how friends joke about things, and make up stories. Well we joked about a restaurant for dominatrixes and a meal themed menu. Breakfast would be light punishment and dinner would be harsh and you could pick any meal in between. So one day, my male friend said he’d pay me ten dollars for brunch. So I went to a sex shop and bought the whip and handcuffs. I still thought it was a joke, but he was serious about it. So he gave me ten bucks and bent over the desk and I hit him with the whip. And he told his friends about it, most of them my friends too. So guys would come by and write meals on the door, and I’d give them a time. So I bought a few more things, started dressing up for it and they kept coming to my door. Even though it gets me a lot of money, I still take it with a sense of humor. I actually think that’s why they keep coming back and why new people keep showing up. It doesn’t have that intensity as the relationships they have. So I guess I thought you heard it from them.”
“They’re in relationships?”
“Most of them yeah. A few of my friends aren’t. But it’s not like they want me as a girlfriend or anything. It’s just casual, I honestly can’t tell you why they enjoy it. I guess their girlfriends won’t do it or their embarrassed to ask. Or maybe, they just need some discipline when they’re away from their parents. I feel more like I’m giving confession than doing anything sexual. So, can I ask you a question? What did you think my whip was when you heard it?”
I looked down into the floor and projected my response into it, “I thought it was your bed hitting the wall”
Darla blushed. Then a smile spread across her lips. Then she began to giggle. “That’s pretty funny.”
“Yeah I guess it is”, I said chuckling a little.
“No, no. It’s really funny”, she said laughing harder now, her cleavage shaking with each outburst. “It’s funny because I’m a virgin!”
Her laughter spread to me and I began to feel my stomach shake. And I knew that somewhere beyond that door, someone was walking by and hearing this. And I wondered what they were thinking. A mental image of Darla in her corset in heels tickling me with a feather came into mind and I laughed even harder.
“Never in a million years” Darla choked between bursts of laughter “did I think anyone would ever say they thought they heard my bed hitting the wall!”
“So you’re really a virgin?”
Darla nodded, her curls jumping up and down, “Like I said the whole dominatrix thing is a joke.”
Darla and I spent a few hours sitting on her bed and laughing at the situation. Me in my underwear and her with the whip, the whole misunderstanding. Tears fell down Darla’s cheeks when I told her about the thought I had about the feather.
“Sometimes,” Darla said when we calmed down “It really doesn’t matter what people think of you. That’s the most important thing I’ve learned all semester.”
I paused and thought about this and realized that Darla was right. I got up to leave again. And Darla stood up and took my twelve dollars off her desk and slid it into the pocket of my jeans. “I can’t take this for just talking to you, I really won’t miss it. Come by and see me sometime, just be sure to keep your pants on.” I smiled widely and Darla kissed me on the cheek. I didn’t bother to wipe off the red print. Who cares what people thought?

I smiled as I strolled down the hallway, I heard the noises this time, but they sounded jumbled together. I climbed the stairs and made my way to my room. The chaise lounge was empty, but then again it must have been past midnight. I paused at room 25 and took down the skinny black marker. I held it confidently in my hand and wrote “Melanie. Let’s do Lunch- Calvin”