Scott: Sanctuary

Phil was relieved when professor Bains ended class early.  He quickly slid into the bathroom, selecting the handicap stall on the end.  Although the bottom foot or so exposed his legs and virtually all sounds emitted could be heard throughout the bathroom and beyond, Phil considered that stall a sanctuary.  He had every inch of graffitti memorized.  Sometimes he would just sit.  Just sit and read.  Away from the conversations that both delighted and tortured him.

Phil graduated from high school one year early – not early enough to be the subject of awe, but just early enough to not get most dirty jokes at Freshman parties.  He felt like the belly-button lint of his generation.  And so he nestled into this belly-button of a town and spent the last three years undoing the extra-credit he did in high school.  Philip was now a year behind with no end in sight.

He took this opportunity to retrace the fading inscriptions on his inner thighs.  In black ink they read “self is an illusion” and “precisely ambiguous” where no one could ever see; the only two truths he had learned from college thus far.