Dorm Tales
Dorm Tales: A Bundle of Five Novels
Thomas Carver
Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Carver
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of my lovely Patreon patrons for their help and support in my work:
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Lee Manns
Tall SF Guy
VWKP
Yue Shi
and others who prefer to remain anonymous
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Table of Contents
ROTC Roommate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Jock Roommate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Bully Roommates
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Straight Roommates
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Broke Roommates
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Author's Note
ROTC Roommate
Chapter 1
On my first real day of college, I learned three things before noon.
First, I learned that my roommate, Jesse, began the day by doing about a million push-ups, and not just quiet little up-and-down things, but the kinds where you throw yourself up in the air and clap your hands after each one. Second, I learned that the day, according to Jesse, began at six in the morning. And third, I learned that I was, at least in my fantasies, capable of murder.
I also learned that I was not cut out for college, so I guess I learned four things.
After Jesse showered and dressed, I went back to sleep for an hour, then rolled out of bed at the chirp of my phone telling me it was time for class. I'd been dreading the communal showers almost as much as my eight AM class. I sniffed my armpit. I smelled fine. I figured I could go to class, then jump in the shower when everyone else was at breakfast or whatever.
I had an intro to history class as my very first class in college. I'd always done fine in history; I had a head for names and dates, so I wasn't worried. I scanned the room. Thirty desks in straight rows, facing a clean, bright whiteboard. Students filled about half the desks. I usually liked a desk in the back, just so people couldn't sit behind me and tease me, tugging at my long hair or making little snide comments about the way I dressed, but this was college. Adults. There wouldn't be that high school bullshit, I hoped.
The only face I recognized was Jesse's. He gave me an unsmiling head-toss. Was that an invitation, a threat, or just an acknowledgement that I existed?
I'd met Jesse less than twenty hours ago. He'd helped me and my parents move in, carrying boxes of my shit up the elevator while my face burned with embarrassment. I'd shown up late to campus, mixing up the dates apparently. I'd missed the orientation, the formal move-in, and all of that. My RA, a man built like a preying mantis, had acted like I'd committed a felony, but Jesse had been friendly enough. He'd yes-sirred my dad and yes-ma'amed my mother, which I think put their conservative hearts at ease, though I'd known enough yes-sirs in my teens to give me pause. People who were that polite to adults were hiding something.
Then again, everyone was hiding something.
He gave me another head-toss, then tilted that golden blond high-and-tight toward the empty desk beside him. An invitation, then.
I settled next to Jesse, who gravely held out a fist. It took me a second, but I bumped it. Jesus Christ, dude, I thought. I just sat down. It's not a major accomplishment.
The professor showed up a few minutes before class started, a bent man with a full head of shockingly gray hair. So we'd be learning history from a first-hand observer, I thought. He looked kind, though, like a bulbous-nosed grandpa whose pockets were always filled with hard candy. He logged onto the computer terminal, but didn't turn on the projector.
He announced each of our names, eliciting a "here" from each. I was always at the end of the alphabet, or near it, with my long and Polish last name. "Spencer?" the professor asked.
"Here," I said, but it came out as a croak, so I said it louder. "Here."
"My hearing is surprisingly robust," the professor said, stepping away from the computer. "No need to shout. I'm professor Winthrope, and this is introduction to civilizations, also known as history 101. That was the last time I'll take attendance. Syllabus is on the course website. Read it on your own. There is no textbook. There are four real books: a novel, an archeological study, and two collections of primary texts. You will read them. I don't do Power Points or lectures. My method is Socratic. It's an oldie but a goodie. Questions?"
Was that it? That was the first day?
No. He wasn't one of those professors who let you out early on the first day.
He went on. "Great, no questions. Then I have one for you. What's a civilization? Spencer, though perhaps with a modulated volume this time?"
"Um," I said. "A civilization is -- uh. You know."
"No, I don't. I am a man who knows nothing. Tell me what a civilization is, because surely you know, as you live in one."
"Um -- "
He waited. I thought he'd move on to someone else. That's what high school teachers did, but he just stared at me with those big, watery eyes. "Let's go back to basics, then," he said finally, and I really thought he'd shift to one of the dozen of hands in the air. But no, those eyes stuck to me like duct tape. "Do you live in a civilization?"
"Yes," I said. Pretty sure of that.
"Do you know anyone who doesn't?"
I almost shook my head, then said, "Yeah, my uncle."
Great white eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Your uncle?"
God, my face felt hot. I must be red as a plum. "He bought one of those campers and started traveling around the country, then set up in Slab City."
"What's Slab City?"
I expla
ined the weird hippie-punk community out in the desert where my uncle lived.
"Excellent," Professor Winthrope said, rocking backwards almost as if he'd decided to move out there. "Let's take Slab City as an example, shall we. Is Slab City a civilization, judging from Spencer's anthropological description of it?" And then, to my relief, he swiveled his eyes to my left. "What is your opinion?"
"I think it is," Jesse said. "I mean, it has the word 'city' right in it."
"Explicate."
"'Civilization' comes from the Latin word for city."
"It does. So?"
"So if it's got cities, it's a civilization."
"Aren't some places more civilized than others?"
"I think that's a different sense of the word," Jesse said. "Maybe."
"How could we find out?"
The relentless grilling continued for fifty minutes, and then exactly on the dot, Professor Winthrope let us go.
"That was intense," I heard someone say behind me.
Jesse fell in step next to me, heavy combat boots taking long bites out of the ground. "Hey."
"Hey."
"He's a character, huh?"
"Yeah," I said. Didn't really want to talk about it.
"You have breakfast yet?" he asked.
"I haven't even showered yet," I said.
"Let's go get breakfast."
"I don't eat breakfast."
"Sure, you do," Jesse said, as if he knew better.
He was lonely too, I realized, though he was too strong-jawed and manly to show it, and so I joined him for at least some coffee in our cafeteria, a hall with long tables and a thundering level of noise. We didn't really talk. He didn't seem like a talker, which surprised me. Why invite me for breakfast and then just quietly eat his eggs and sip his coffee, eyes scanning the room? He was a weird one, but then, so was I.
We didn't share any other classes, and at least my other classes involved less grilling and more Power Point presentations. And hell, I told myself, I'd made a friend. Sort of. Even if I did start the day wanting to murder his gung-ho ass.
I crawled into bed early, mostly because Jesse did. It felt weird staying up while he was trying to sleep. So I stripped down and slid under the covers at about ten o'clock. I should have brought pajamas or something. It was like camping with a stranger.
The noise of at least three different clashing genres of music thudded through the walls. It was quiet hours, but that was a joke.
I closed my eyes, tried to sleep, couldn't.
And I knew why.
It wasn't just the noise and the unfamiliar environment, or my humiliating morning, or my sheer terror at waking up tomorrow and doing it all over again. At least tomorrow I only had two classes, so that wouldn't be quite as bad. And neither of them was at eight.
I turned on my side. The lights from outside flooded our room with a glow too bright for sleep.
Jesse had tossed off his covers. It was still pretty hot, and there wasn't any air-conditioning in the dorms. Light glinted off his chest, swelling with two low, flat pecs that rose and fell in slow rhythm with his breath. His nipples were dark spots, like punctuation marks. One arm dangled off the bed -- if you could call the low and uncomfortable bunks that -- and the other was stretched over his head, biceps bulging.
He shifted, and the blanket slid further down, uncovering his flat abs and the V-curve of his pelvis, sprinkled with blond hair. What a little Aryan, I thought. Put him on a WWII German propaganda poster, short blond hair, blue eyes, hard bodied smoothness. He could lean on a tractor and point at the horizon. My grandmother would plotz.
I slid my hand under the covers, over my own flat, smooth chest. I found my hard nipple, slick with sweat. Then down. I didn't have the ripple of abs he had. My fingers traveled familiar ground, my flat stomach, the vortex of my navel, and the waistband of my boxers damp with sweat.
His eyes snapped open. Fixed on mine.
My hand froze an inch from the swollen head of my cock. And I realized what I was doing, how creepy it was, getting ready to stroke myself to sleep while I watched my roommate.
"Too fucking hot to sleep," he said in a low voice.
I thought for a heart-thudding moment that he was talking about heat in the sexual sense, but then I realized he was speaking literally. "Yeah," I said.
"We need a fan or something in here."
"Yeah."
"Pick one up tomorrow," he said. I had no idea if that was a command or a promise. Then he turned his face to the wall, showing me his back and the firm curve of the top of his ass. He slept naked.
I turned to the opposite wall. Don't jerk off thinking about your roommate, you fucking pervert, I told myself.
And then, of course, I couldn't think of anything else.
That morning, he did his goddamned pushups, which I studiously avoided looking at, since he had done nothing for modesty but pull on a pair of boxers. Then he took a military uniform out of the closet.
"Getting ready for the invasion?" I asked, sleepily. I sat up in bed, feeling clammy. He was right; we needed a fan.
"Got my ROTC electives on Tuesday and Thursday. Required to wear my uniform for those."
I wondered if he ever used pronouns or ever smiled. So far, I couldn't recall him doing either. He bent over, showing a hard, round ass in his boxers, and drew on his pants, one leg at a time. Just like all of us, I thought. When I'd heard that saying as a kid -- he puts on his pants one leg at a time, like everyone else -- I'd insisted on putting my pants on with both legs at the same time for a few weeks, just because I didn't want to be like everyone else.
I'd outgrown that. The pants part of it, anyway.
I had a relatively easy Tuesday schedule: freshman composition, which I should have clepped out of it but didn't, and gen ed astronomy. And unlike the terrifying Professor Winthrope, those profs mostly read the syllabus to us and let us go early. The comp prof, a woman not a whole lot older than me, made us do an ice-breaker, a waste of time, but whatever.
I didn't have a car on campus, so I couldn't very well go buy a fan, if that had been what he meant the night before. So instead I sat in the too-hot room and tried to study history. Winthrope had assigned us Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart as our first book, and I couldn't make a bit of sense out of it. If he asked me about it, I'd have to shrug and say "something about Africa."
I was trying to pull my way through what passed as a plot, door open to cool off the room, when a dirty-brown mass of skater hair popped up in the doorway. "Nice deck," he said.
My skateboard was propped up against the edge of my bed. "Yeah, thanks," I said. "I'm Spencer."
"Nate. I think I saw you in Comp?"
"Yeah. I remember."
"Damn, Professor Clarke's kind of a babe, though, right?"
I nodded. She'd been young, so I suppose so, if you were into such things. Women, that is. "Yeah. She's got nice tits." I hadn't even registered her tits; for all I knew, she had one big one in the middle of her chest. But that seemed to satisfy him.
Why was I doing this, pretending to be straight? It was college -- I could come out. Yeah, and my army-man roommate would break my ass.
Nate wasn't entirely outside of babe territory himself, come to think of it. Baby-faced with a bit of a California gargle, he stood all of five-seven max. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie, not all the way. Inside was something brown and soft. "Dessert?" he asked, his voice low.
My lips spread in a smile. "Nate, you and me, we're gonna be good friends."
The fudge edible was soft from his body heat. We split it. He said it wasn't very strong, but it was enough for me. The warm distance from myself, the slight fragmentation of time, came on slow but lingered. He sat on the edge of my bed and I sat in the hard wooden chairs provided by the dorm.
"You need to get some fuckin', I dunno, papasans or something up in here," he said.
"Yeah. My parents wanted to take me shopping for furniture but I wa
s just done with 'em by the time we got moved in."
"I hear ya there. Hey, is your roommate cool?"
"He's in ROTC," I said. "Never smiles. But otherwise he's okay. We're in Winthrope's Civ class."
"Shit, I hear Winthrope's a bastard."
"I can confirm that," I said.
Look at me, I thought. In college two days, and a new friend each day. And not only a friend, but a supplier, or at least someone who might point me to a supplier. I wasn't a pothead or anything, but I liked a little bud from time to time.
"How about your roommate?" I asked.
"He's a Korean fundamentalist Christian."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, but whatever. He don't bug me, I don't bug him."
"Mine sleeps naked," I said, without realizing it was coming out of my mouth.
Nate laughed, his head tossed back, the tiny hairs on his chin catching the light. "Fuck, bro. Take pictures, put 'em on the web. Probably some pervs would get off on that."
Yeah, me, I thought, but at least this time I didn't say it aloud. Or didn't think I did.
Weak pot my ass.
We talked about skating for a while, shared rumors about the campus. Apparently our dorm was haunted, there were steam tunnels connecting the various buildings but they were off-limits which stopped no one, and a few years ago a professor went nuts and slapped a student. Probably the same stories they tell at every university in the country, just as every high school has a girl who, according to rumor, stuck a hot dog in her pussy and had to get it surgically removed.
Nate's phone buzzed, and he checked it. "Shit, gotta go, bro. Duty calls. Good talking with you, though. I'm in 217 if you wanna come by and scare my Christian roommate."
"Sounds good," I said. "I'll pretend I worship the devil or something."
"You got long hair, dude, that's one step away from sucking Satan's dick in his book. Okay, remember -- get those naked pics of your army man roomie and we'll put up a website. Make bank."
He wasn't out of the room for four seconds before Jesse came around the corner, cap in hand. He tossed the hat on his desk, closed the door with his booted foot. He started unbuttoning his uniform shirt. Had he heard Nate's last comment? He didn't look like he was pissed, or rather, he didn't look any more pissed than usual.