Warning of minor short scenes of attempted sexual assault that some may find disturbing.
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My freshman year of college was supposed to be a new start for me. I chose the furthest university that would accept me and planned to leave my past life for good. For a bit everything seemed like it would turn out great, but even when it seems everything changes some things will always stay the same.
I've always been rather small, hitting puberty much later than any of my peers and even then, not experiencing much of a growth spurt. I reached 5'3" before my doctor told me I was just about done growing, and whereas all my peers had their voices deepen and their body hair thicken, I was left with a rather high-pitched trill and little hair beyond pubic hair, which I always kept trimmed or shaved.
I kept myself in shape, but no matter how hard I tried I was never able to develop any noticeable muscle, leaving me thin and soft. Needless to say, I was never exactly popular with the girls, and I was an easy target for any of the guys who felt the need to flex their masculinity a bit and pick on the wimpy kid. I was mostly able to grin and bear it, but one incident in my senior year of high school made me realize I had to get as far away as possible.
As you might expect from somebody who looks like me, I'm not exactly very well-endowed. At my absolute hardest I only measure somewhere around three and a half inches, and unfortunately, I would say I'm a bit of a grower, so in my flaccid state my penis is barely a nub. I had always done my best to hide this fact, thinking it best to keep at least any hint of masculinity that I might have had, which made the gym showers quite difficult to navigate. I usually got away with going in after everyone else by wasting time helping the coach pick up after class, which also earned me a few brownie points with him and put me on his good side. Fortunately, I managed to keep this up until near the end of my senior year.
However, one day I casually mentioned to him an exam that I had in my next class, and he insisted I hit the showers and get there as quickly as I could. Despite my protests he wouldn't take no for an answer, so I sulked to locker room, dreading what was about to happen. I got to my locker, luckily tucked away in a corner out of sight of the shower heads, and quickly stripped down to a towel. I was hoping to wait it out a little longer in my corner, praying nobody would notice me, but one of my more athletic peers soon turned the corner and saw me lurking.
"Wohoho, looks like Alex is actually gonna be joining us in the showers today! Come on, little man, you can't just stand there all day!" His voice was boisterous, ensuring everyone else in the locker room knew I was there. I reluctantly followed him, deciding it would just be easier to face a wall in the shower rather than try to explain why I was hiding. He walked behind me, firmly pushing me towards the shower heads where everyone was waiting. When I turned the corner I paused, unable to believe what I was seeing.
A consequence of me always avoiding the showers was that I had never actually seen any of my peers nude, only ever seeing another penis in porn. A part of my mind had convinced myself that I might not have been that small, and that the ones I would see in porn are simply exceptions, but what I saw before me quickly dashed that illusion. Even the smallest among them was easily three or four times my size, and some of the larger ones seemed utterly absurd to me. I had never thought about men before, and even then, I didn't see them in a sexual manner, but I simply couldn't pull my eyes away from their penises. In my stupor I felt a hand tug the towel around my waist. "No towels in the showers, bud, you know the rules." The hand of the boy behind me pulled my towel away, leaving me standing nude in front of everyone.
At first, there was a silence that seemed to drag for minutes, though I suspect it was only a few seconds. Before long, I began to hear laughter, subdued chuckles at first, but when my usher passed, he unabashedly spoke; "whoa, I guess you really are a little man after all!" This broke the seal, and suddenly everyone was outright laughing. Even those who had always been nice to me struggled to stifle their laughter. I felt my face turn beet red, and I quickly grabbed my towel from the ground and ran back to my locker. The nickname "little man" suddenly had a new meaning after that day.
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Like I said, though, this year would be different. Nobody I knew from high school went to this university, which made sense based on the exorbitant price they were charging for out of state. Fortunately, my parents were extremely generous with my college fund so I could pay the tuition with only some relatively minor student loans. For the first time in a long time I actually felt confident and optimistic, and I went into orientation with an entirely new outlook on life. My mood was only made better when I was informed that my expected roommate had suddenly declined his admission, leaving me with a double room entirely to myself, at least for my first semester. A small part of me thought that this would be a godsend for picking up girls, but I didn't want to get too overconfident and quickly pushed that thought aside.
The rest of the orientation day seemed to drag on, but I wasn't about to let anything sour my mood. Everybody seemed friendly and not once did I get any diminutive comments, something I wasn't used to yet. During one of the lectures about alcohol awareness or something or other I found my mind drifting, absent mindedly doodling in my notebook which was entirely devoid of notes. The guy sitting next to me, Sam, took notice and started talking to me about what I was drawing, and I soon found myself explaining to him all the random characters and stories I had come up with in my mind. As I spoke in hushed tones, trying not to alert the lecturer, he just listened with a genuine interest that I had not received from many people before. As we talked, I found out that he would be living on the same floor as me, only a few rooms down. The lecture ended and we parted ways as his schedule lead him somewhere else, but he let me know we would catch up later. I had made my first friend so easily. Things really were going to be different this year.
However, when I was finally escorted to my dorm, I finally had something to pull me down from my high. The RA lead me to my room, the bags that I had left in the lobby earlier already sitting on the bed, and then gave me a brief tour of the building. There was a common area, the lobby, a few small classrooms in the basement, and finally as he was leading me back to my room, he stopped to show me the bathroom. The door opened to a standard looking public restroom, with a row of stalls and a corresponding sink in front of each. Directly to the right of the door, however, was a cheap plastic curtain, which when pushed aside made my heart sink.
Along the walls were a row of communal shower heads, almost identical to those in my high school locker room. I asked the RA if there were private showers anyway, but he just gave a rehearsed wince and let me know this was it. "Don't worry though!" he said in an artificially cheerful tone. "Everyone usually gets used to it in a few days and then doesn't mind at all!" I feigned acceptance of his reassurance, but the only thing running through my mind were the flashbacks of that day in the showers.
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The first week of classes went by better than I could have imagined. I enjoyed most of the courses I was taking, save for the science lab I had to take as a gen-ed, and all the professors seemed great. I still hadn't decided a major, but after just a week of taking an art elective I was already leaning in that direction. After classes I usually met up with a couple of the guys from my floor and a few girls from the floor below and had dinner in the dining hall. Nobody had known each other for long at that point so a lot of the conversations mostly ended up as small talk, but it was still fun to have people to talk to duringdinner.
That being said, I hit it off right away with Sam, the guy I had met during orientation, and I already knew I had found my best friend. I would talk to him about my art and writing ideas, drawing up characters while he watched intently. He played on the school's tennis team, getting recruited on a scholarship, and he would always talk about practice, constantly trying to explain to me the scoring system that I could never seem to grasp. We seemed to have almost the exact same sense of humor, which really made conversation easier despite our different interests. Sam was a pretty big guy, easily 6'2" and he kept himself fit for his athletics. I know it made me look even smaller in comparison when we hung out, but I was secretly happy to be friends with somebody like him, thinking he might provide me some sort of protection from anybody looking for somebody smaller to pick on.
Even dorm life seemed to be going smoothly, for the most part. There were a couple of guys I didn't think I would get along with, but they seemed to form their own little clique pretty quickly which prevented too much crossover with the people I was trying to hang out with. The RA would always set up game nights as a way for people to get to know each other, and while expected most people to scoff at the idea everyone seemed very open to it. My sleep schedule got a little skewed, but that was mostly because of my shower schedule.
I knew I couldn't just avoid taking a shower all together, so I decided I would just take one late every night, after I assumed most people would be in bed, or at least not about to shower. Living in my room alone made this even easier, as I didn't have to worry about disturbing anybody late at night. I shockingly easily got used to this schedule, taking naps during the day if I felt overly tired, and I even began to enjoy my late-night private showers. There was something freeing about having an entire communal shower to myself in a way that I never quite experienced in the gym locker room. Whereas then I would always have to rush to get to class, in the dorm showers I could take my time and have an actually relaxing shower.
