Seven A.M., Still Learning

Somewhere past the row of lockers, a shower ran — that specific YMCA sound, the pipes slightly too loud, the drain slightly too slow. She had been listening to it since she sat down on the bench, and then she had moved into the stall, and now she was still listening, and it was still running, and it was the only sound that mattered.

She had her gym bag on her lap. The bullet was in the small front pocket, in its little drawstring pouch, the way the tutorial had recommended storing it. She had watched the tutorial twice — once on her laptop with headphones, once on her phone in bed with the brightness turned down — and both times she had paused at the same moment, rewound, watched the same thirty seconds again. The woman in the video had been matter-of-fact about it. Clinical, almost. That was what she had liked. No performance. Just: here is where, here is how, here is what you are trying to understand.

She wanted to understand.

The changing room fluorescents buzzed at a frequency she could feel behind her eyes. She was still in her sports bra and leggings from the workout — she hadn't changed yet, hadn't showered, had come directly here because she had made the decision on the elliptical and she didn't want to unmake it by standing in a shower first. The bra's band was slightly damp at the bottom edge, the ribbed fabric pressing across her ribs in a line she could trace without touching it, a line that had been there the whole workout and that she had not noticed until now.

She took the pouch out of the bag. Set the bag on the floor.

Her left hand held the bullet, still in the pouch, the drawstring pulled loose. Her right hand was flat on her thigh, fingers together, the legging fabric thin and cool where her palm pressed. She was sitting with her knees together — both feet flat, the way she sat when she was paying attention to something.

The shower kept running.

She had a specific goal. She had read about it, watched a video about it, and now she was here, and the goal was simply to feel what direct stimulation actually felt like, because she had never been sure she had done it correctly before. That was the whole thing. That was why she had bought it. She was not nervous, exactly — she was the way she got before an exam she had studied for, when she knew the material but was still aware that knowing the material and performing the material were two different conditions.

She exhaled through her nose, and the sound that came out was smaller than she expected — quieter and shorter, pressed tight by something in her chest that was not anxiety.

The bullet came out of the pouch. Smaller than she remembered from the website. Smooth and cool in her left palm. She pressed the single button once to confirm it worked — a brief, low hum against her lifeline — and then pressed it again to stop.

The shower ran.

Her right hand was still on her thigh. She was still sitting with her knees together. She was aware, in a way that was almost academic, of the heat that had been building there since the elliptical — not from the workout, or not only from that. She was aware of the pressure of her own thighs against each other, the slight give of the legging fabric, the weight of her legs resting without effort.

She looked at the back of the stall door. The little hook. The gap at the bottom where the fluorescent light came through.

The moment before she moved her hand was longer than she had planned for.