Locker room: ghastly sounds from the stall

timeline_event

texture · 3 Nov YDAU, ~1640h

When: Tuesday 3 November YDAU, ~1640h — the post-P.M.-drills locker room
What: While the exhausted upperclassmen slump in towels and trade their ritual thesaurus of fatigue, Schacht is audibly suffering in one of the toilet stalls off the showers — "Distant ghastly sounds from T. Schacht" — the tip of one of his enormous purple shower thongs visible under the stall door. Hal's gaze on those inert feet produces the scene's small meditation: "The defecatory posture is an accepting posture, it occurs to him." The Crohn's, the carminative-with-every-meal regimen, the gout in the right knee, and a boil on his inner thigh are all catalogued here; Hal slips off to apply Visine in a "Schacht-free stall."