Entry One Hundred Two: Adam Mahoney, You Just Won!

[This entry is the current story I am working on. This is thirty-two of who knows how many will be posted. Enjoy it while it lasts...]

Adam sat on one of the wood benches between the lockers, bent at the waist, head between his legs, trying to catch enough air in his lungs to get past his dizziness. He knew he had overdone his workout, but in a perverse and nauseating way, it felt good to be physical again. Once he started, he had trouble stopping, even though his body had clocked out ten minutes before his mind had agreed. He had walked for fifteen minutes on the treadmill, keeping the pace very slow, and then had worked the weight circuit twice on the universal weight machines. He had used very little weight but the resistance was adequate for his torpid constitution. He then spent another fifteen minutes on the treadmill and that is when he physically shut down. He was able to muster enough clarity to turn off the machine and stagger to the locker room where he now waited for some relief.

When he felt strong enough to stand he lit a cigarette and made his way to the coaches office, not sure what he would find, but hoping to find some towels. The office was open but there weren’t any supplies, as least in plain sight. As he was walking out he noticed a wooden dowel with a loop of wire extending out of one end, hanging on a nail in the door jamb, a key, secured by the wire, dangling to one side. He picked it up and the word “laundry” was written on it in marker. He turned left out of the office, looking for a locked door, and found it around the corner. The key worked and when he turned on the light he faced several wooden shelves stocked with white towels, rolls of white tape and plastic tubs of orange analgesic rub. The room smelled like a spearmint greenhouse, much more pleasant than the room he had just vacated. He grabbed two towels off a shelf and walked back to the lockers. He hadn’t brought any shampoo or soap but assumed he could find something in one of the lockers. After ten minutes of searching he turned up nothing and came to the conclusion that the males of Lincoln High School had been pigs. “I’ll bet the girls used soap,” he said, and he walked out the locker room door, back into the gym and pushed through the doors leading into the girl’s locker room.

The first thing he felt as he entered was the strong sense that he shouldn’t have invaded that sacred space. It was empty, of course, and it looked very similar to the boy’s locker room. The lockers were blue, the benches were made of wood and it too smelled like feet, but the aura of estrogen was still strong and even without a host body to work through, its ability to make him uncomfortable and to feel he was in forbidden territory was creepy. Adam lowered his head and marched toward the first row of lockers, opening the first one he came across without a lock. His faith in women was vindicated when he found shampoo, conditioner and liquid soap on the small shelf at the top of the locker. He grabbed all three and turned to leave but then hesitated. “What the hell; I dreamed about this in high school so I might as well take advantage of it now.” He turned around, walked toward the back, stripped off his clothes, placed them in a pile at the entrance of the girl’s shower, stepped in and turned on one of the shower heads. Although he was still uncomfortable he knew he didn’t have to be and that was a small but noteworthy perk of being the last man standing on the face of the earth.

All words and images ©2007/J. Colle