my roommate rants about semen retention while I clean the toilet

balls & bowls | flash fiction

Feb 24, 2025

Apparently proto-toilets were just gaping holes and the Romans sat thigh to thigh batting their lashes in bro-ey fellowship as they pinched off loaves and passed around their wiping sponge. Whenever my head's inches from the bowl I can't help but envy them—they knew something we don't: that exposure to shared filth made them close-knit and brotherly and inspired the universe to hum for them in a way it never will for us. Maybe scraping off my roommate's calcified piss will make me evolve? Make me more empathetic? More Roman? But then again, the Romans used piss to clean their togas and whiten their teeth—

"BRO, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW POWERFUL YOU CAN BE!"

My nose puckers from the bleachy citrus. He's yelling from the living room. I assume he's sprawled on the couch in his always-damp sweats, Red Bull in his fist, baby-birding sageness from NoFap cucks like SeedWarrior911 and mrFullBallz.

"I HAVEN'T BUSTED IN THREE MONTHS AND I FEEL UNSTOPPABLE!"

Did the Romans look down at their shit and feel the same existential nausea I do? The certainty that life is spent cleaning things that unwaveringly descend back into dirt?

I press the brush against the porcelain until its bristles fan out like a road-squashed sea urchin. Ninety days of unspent cum pushing against the manholes of his pores, white oceans thrashing like a man strangled from behind. Does it go bad like milk? It must…Does it thicken, curdle, congeal? By now it must have crystallized into some subdermal mineral that needs to be mined from his crotch with a chisel.

"DUDES BACK IN THE DAY KNEW ALL THIS SHIT. SAMURAIS, GLADIATORS, BOXERS—THEY WOULDN'T TOUCH THEMSELVES BEFORE BATTLE…"

I sigh through my mouth, bracing my free hand against the rim of the tub as I push the brush around in frantic figure-eights. My wrist starts aching. I wonder if the Romans feared repetitive motion injuries—if they ever winced while wringing out their piss-soaked wool thinking, "Jovedamnit…this isn't worth it."

"…EINSTEIN DID IT. DA VINCI DID IT. NAPOLEON…ALL THE GREATS KNEW THIS SHIT…"

I press my lips together to stifle a laugh. He speaks like the burning bush whispered to him—its fuming breath affirming greed, retention, and prohibition as the holy trinity of purity.

The water turns frothy with shit curds and Lysol. I imagine a cavalcade of juggernauts clenching their jaws in cold showers, pacing down candlelit halls, sketching blueprints, mumbling relativity, clinging to all they've been given, riding into battle with balls the size of Mercury.

"…WHEN YOU KEEP IT IN, ALL THAT ENERGY GOES TO THE MIND, BRO—YOUR MIND, YOUR MUSCLES…YOUR FUCKING ESSENCE!"

I flush. The water spirals down in a bubbling vortex, sucking my efforts into a hidden basin of communal waste. Maybe…he's right? Perhaps years of ignorant expenditure have left me cavernous? Prone to implosion? Maybe if I hoarded my Hippocratic humors and let them sour past their sell-by my hair wouldn't be in retreat, my vision would be virgin-sharp, my posture Victorian—some AWOL intuition would come home to roost in my blood? Maybe if we all walked around full to the brim with biles and phlegms we'd sense each other's filth and the universe would hum like it did for the Romans…

"WHY DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOU TO JERK OFF ALL THE TIME?"

He coughs. I hear the clink of a Red Bull against the coffee table and the crack-hiss of another being opened.

I scrub the base of the toilet where slut's wool and hair and TP collects around the bolts. The tiles are cold against my knees. What would happen if I stopped cleaning? If I let the corpses fall and rot and accumulate layers of salts and polyps and allowed them to breathe and call vibrant species to their bosoms?

"THEY WANT YOU WEAK, DUDE! THEY WANT YOU SOFT!"

My knees pop as I stand. I read somewhere that the ancients believed semen came from the spinal cord and that every cum shot was a tiny death and that if you came too much your soul escaped out your cock.

I put the frayed brush in its holder and wipe my hands on my pants. Am I soft?Am I dying because I spend hours watching well-hung herculean blokes splooge their souls on a twenty-something's face? Watching and stroking until I shoot spine milk into my belly button and pass out?

"I'M JUST SAYING, IF YOU EVER WANNA LEVEL UP, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO."

I run my hands under the hot water, staring into the mirror. Level up? To what… bio-hoarder? I watch myself shrug. That wouldn’t be so bad…hoarders seem so happy. They remember things. They know where they’ve been and wear hearts on their sleeves. Every day, they walk among the rotting stuff they love, litter us urbane folk are quick to part with. Every day, they ferment into intricate sweetness.

I stare at the soap and decide against it; I'll hang on to whatever’s there for just a little while longer.