1.
"Can you to go into the bathroom for a minute so I can gather my thoughts," she says."I don't need to go," he says."I know. This is not about me reminding you to relieve yourself as if I was your mother, and we were about to leave for a family picnic. It's about space and the possibility of the creative moment.”
He knows he should be offended, or that someone other than him would be offended, but he is no one other than him, and the request, while not exactly qualifying as promising from the usual romantic perspective, feels a little bit lovely. After all she could have asked him to leave. And the bathroom is very close to where they are standing right now, which is close to each other and therefore not as innately mysterious as being close to her by not being close to her. Why more people who were considering being lovers didn't have their dates spend a little time in a bathroom was beyond him. Maybe he'd suggest it to friends, depending of course on how things turn out. And it would be nice to have a unique dating experience to report. Everyone knows the basics of how this sort of thing generally goes and were probably sick and tired of hearing the tried and true details, some of which probably weren't even true, much less tried.
2.
"Will you stay in there until I knock?" she asks. It seems to him the most reasonable of requests. The reasonableness of the request takes on a life of its own within him. Its thoughtful if unusual music spreads through his insides and make him want to hasten his entry into the bathroom, in no small part because that would demonstrate, in a way she would be unable to miss, the ardent nature of his responsiveness. And why shouldn't he show his appreciation in a physical way? For one thing it would save her the trouble of reading his mind, if in fact she had an interest in reading his mind, which he hopes she does. The last thing he wants is his rapid-fire sprint to the bathroom to make him appear less interesting.
"I sure will," he says, then darts into the bathroom.
3.
The bathroom is very small. He thinks this is what it must be like to be in solitary. He has seen movies and also real-life documentaries on solitary confinement. There is no bed in the bathroom which is proof that it is not solitary, or if it is, it's solitary of the cruelest kind. On the other hand there is a woman on the other side of the door seeking out the creative moment and none of the boys in lock-up have that going on. It's unfortunate that images of the boys in lock-up, which naturally remind him of the sadder aspects of human life, are filling his head because he knows as well as anyone that romance should flood the mind with lyrical images. He has no device on him to help him gage the time. He might have been here for hours. They have the room for the night so it's not like the urgency of time has to intrude, but he wishes it would. More time passes, who knows how much. He hears her moving around. It is like waking in the middle of the night and thinking a burglar or a stray animal is inexplicably close at hand, only he's been awake the whole time. He should say something. Is that allowed? What will that do to the creative moment?
4.
"Jacqueline," he says because that's her name and to call out another woman's name from the bathroom would be bizarre, but he thinks right after doing it, that to have called out another woman's name from the bathroom might contribute to the creative moment. For him there was the surprise of the confinement, for her, why not the surprise of another woman's name.
"Shh," she says. It so great to hear her voice. It gives him courage.
"Penelope," he shouts out.
"Who?" she says.
"Penelope, " he says, more quietly this time.
"Okay whatever," she says. He has a lot of confidence in the future, regardless of location.
Somewhere between a novella about a fella, and a fleshy bit of flash fiction colliding with a prose poem lies the work of Peter Thomas Bullen. His first book of short stories ‘Wallflower’ came out from Nomadic Press in 2016. Several of his live readings can be found on YouTube.