Shower Block

With one notable exception among USF's mailgirls, there seemed to be two schools of thought as to how the girls should dress in the morning. The first held that, since they would be stripping the moment they arrived at work, it didn't matter what they wore. These girls -- and they were increasingly in the minority -- arrived each day in something like yoga pants or lounge wear, comfortable sneakers and lightweight sweatshirts.

The other school, and the one that Thirteen was now firmly encamped in, felt the need to overcompensate for their actual work uniforms by putting themselves together as if they were going to real, normal jobs on Wall Street. It didn't matter if they had to get up even earlier than they already were. It didn't matter if they showered and did their hair at home only to have to repeat the exercise here in the locker room a short while later. Thirteen liked getting dressed in the morning, she liked the normalcy of the routine, she liked being able to pass as any other girl commuting to the office. The style had gravitated more and more towards "vampish" though, and there were any number of unspoken rules among the mailgirls themselves that they all followed, even if Mistress Zero had nothing to do with them. Only skirts and dresses were worn, for instance. There was also a fine line between "flirty" and "slutty," and it was a "no-no" to cross from the former into the latter. Short skirts were acceptable, to a point; tightness, on the other hand, was far more important.

Thirteen, like most girls, had started in the first camp -- sweatpants and jeans, t-shirts and casual shoes -- almost as if the way she dressed was itself the first stage on the twelve steps towards becoming a full-blown mailgirl. Embarassment. Depression. Nihilism. But then, eventually, came acceptance, and a desire to fit in with the mores and habits of the girls before her. And, before she knew it, Thirteen was spending an alarmingly high percentage of her stipend on business-wear that she'd put on only for the commute to work, and then again for the commute home.

And then, outside of those two schools of commuting wardrobe, there was Number One. She hadn't been assigned her number for any specific reason, only that she'd just happened to be approached to volunteer just an hour or so before Number Three and the original Number Two. But something about the number had set her apart, even if it was just in her own mind. She alone commuted to and from work in-uniform -- naked, except for a cropped, tan, summer-weight trench coat.

Given that her locker was more-or-less in the center of the locker room, Thirteen really had her choice as to whether she would shower on one end of the room or the other. Girls tended to gravitate towards the shower block closest to their lockers, but they weren't slavish towards doing so. There were eight showerheads for twenty-four girls, and they all needed to shower around the same times as one another in the morning, over lunch, and in the evening. In practice, then, the girls showered wherever there was an open spot. If there wasn't one, and they weren't willing or able to wait, they typically joined one of the other girls and shared.

Number Twenty-Three had joined Twenty-One in the shower block on Thirteen's end of the locker room, and both Fifteen and Sixteen looked to be following behind momentarily. On the other end, Two and Three were both still finger-deep in their own sex (hence, the moaning Thirteen had been greeted with that morning) under a single shower head.

One and Twelve had just begun their respective showers alone. And Five was just getting out. Thirteen chose to cross to the other side of the locker room and take Five's place, counter-intuitively preferring to shower as close to the masturbating pair of girls as possible. The logic went that, when one girl or another was touching herself, no one in the audience on the other side of the mirror glass was going to pay one lick of attention to the other girls nearby.

Twelve had taken the showerhead closest to the two masturbators, however, and only One's presence under the far left showerhead had kept Five from sliding any further away from them when she'd been showering. Like the toilets leading to the service elevators, there were no partitions, no shower curtains, and no privacy; the shower blocks themselves were open to the room beyond. But it wasn't as if the locker room filled with steam each morning; not only would that steam have fogged the view the USF employees had of the showering mailgirls, but it would have meant the mailgirls would have been allowed a simple creature comfort as warm water.

Cold showers were universally acknowledged as a solution for getting too aroused, but you couldn't tell that to the two girls with their fingers inside themselves at one end of the shower block. Such was a fact of life in the locker room, as the girls dealt with the confusing feelings of arousal caused by their current vocation. Full-blown lesbian love-making was a punishable offense, at least here in the building, but Two and Three (a couple since before Thirteen had joined the program) managed to stay on the right side of the line by keeping their hands to themselves. It wasn't exactly uncommon for two girls to be diddling themselves side by side, but the amount of eye contact and the proximity with which Two and Three were doing it was rare. More common sights included girls washing one another's backs or shampooing one another's hair, sharing a brief and friendly peck on the cheeks or even lips as a quick hello, or playfully slapping someone's ass. Mostly, though, this was reserved for the generally more upbeat end-of-the-day shower than the somber and dutiful early morning shower with the work day still ahead.

While Thirteen was content to let them continue on with their ministrations without interruption, Two grunted out a quick, "Hi" as Thirteen stepped into the shower just a few feet to her right.

"Hi," Thirteen offered in a non-committal tone. She felt the frigid water fall over her as she turned the shower on, and ducked her head under it quickly.

It wasn't that Thirteen was above masturbating in the locker room; that ship had sailed long ago, and she could likely count on at least one session of self-pleasure before the end of her shift today. But she'd gotten herself off earlier that morning, as she had every morning since sometime in early July, and Thirteen had just enough self control (or, at least, she told herself that she did) that she didn't necessarily have to climax before her shift began. It was an utterly pointless line in the sand, given the behavior of the girls around her, and the predictability of her own expected behavior a bit later in the morning. And she had failed to live up to that morning conviction already once in the last week -- losing a battle of wills with herself, and succumbing to resignation and rationalization. But in a life defined by control and surrender, Thirteen comforted herself by knowing she could at least try to exert control over this.

Beside her, One reached for the communal shampoo. Thirteen glanced back towards the metal desk, and -- after confirming that Mistress Zero still hadn't arrived -- decided against going through the show of shaving her pussy. She was already completely bare and stubble-free, having shaved at home that morning. But it was still a calculated risk, if Mistress Zero were to be watching on the other side of the glass. It wasn't necessarily a requirement that the girls shave every morning, only that they be completely hairless when their shifts began. Often, even when unnecessary, Thirteen still went through the exercise, as it was easier to make a show of the act than to be subjected her mistress's inspection.

Showering in cold water was another hardship that Thirteen had first learned to endure, and later to prefer. It woke her up in the morning, and cooled her down after running around the building at the end of the day. Even in her own apartment, Thirteen had started showering without warm water. It was, admittedly, still nerve-wracking to shave her intimate areas in cold water. But Thirteen couldn't deny that it left her with a closer shave, and she was oddly proud of how smooth her pubic area was, both visually and to the touch.

As she ran her fingers through her hair, Thirteen watched herself in the reflection. Given the way the locker room was exposed to the elevator lobby, the coffee cart, and the café tables, a good part of this was for her audience. The shower was still more utilitarian than for performance. The masturbation taking place at the far end of the shower block -- and Two was beginning to climax now -- was also more utilitarian than performance. Still, Thirteen found that she occasionally lingered a bit longer in the shower than she did at home, that she soaped up and washed her breasts and intimate areas a bit more than necessary, that she bent at the waist to pick up the shampoo instead of crouching and bending at the knees.

The thought of her audience sent a familiar tickle up her spine. Not today, she told herself. By tonight, she'd be free of ever having to shower in public again, and there was no need to give in and debase herself more than she had to. Even if she knew full well she'd be forced to touch herself later than morning. Even if she'd gotten off in the shower dozens of times in the past. Even if Two's orgasmic exhalations were turning her on.

Thirteen shook her head, and shampooed her hair. She made herself think of what she needed to do that night, back at her apartment, before leaving for New Haven in the morning. She knew that if she started down the path of justifying a morning session, she'd lose what little control she had. As she washed her hair, and soaped up her body, she instead went through a mental checklist of boxes she'd packed up last night and the few remaining items that needed to be packed. She was careful to avoid letting her fingers spend too much time washing her pussy, and careful to keep herself from gently pinching her straining-at-attention nipples as she rinsed herself off.

One was done, and turned the water off beside her. Twelve, like Thirteen, had managed to hold off any sort of intimate session with herself, and was ready to step from the shower. And Three, after letting out a deep, animal-like series of grunts - instead of the sexy, effeminate groans Two had just released - kissed her partner lovingly and was now ready to move on with her day. Thirteen hurried through the rest of her shower as new girls rotated in.

There was a small cubby on either end of the shower block -- four in total, in the locker room -- that held white, rough-to-the-touch bath towels, and Thirteen helped herself to one. None was big enough to be wrapped around even the smallest girl, but that was never intended to be their function. They were good enough for Thirteen to dry herself, and so she patted herself dry before depositing her towel the laundry. Thankfully, USF employed a laundry service that came weekly and kept the girls stocked with relatively clean towels; it was probably only USF's decision not to invest in on-site washers and dryers that kept this responsibility from the mailgirls themselves. Thirteen knew of a couple of girls who regularly deposited some of their own, personal laundry in with the towels; the clothes would usually come back, though sometimes they wouldn't. They'd learned not to include underwear, which was guaranteed to go missing, and be careful that they had a spare outfit available so they weren't relying on something for the commute home. Thirteen didn't care for the harsh, industrial detergents that were used, however, and she didn't trust the service even with the few pieces of laundry she wore to work that didn't need to be dry-cleaned. But when they were working upwards of seventy to eighty hours every week, Thirteen supposed she could understand the desire of some of the other girls not to spend free-time doing laundry at home, and their willingness to risk the fact that not all of it would be returned.