“Oh, shit,” I heard him whisper to himself when he noticed I was in bed.

I rolled my eyes in the dark as he struggled to take off his shoes, knocking over a stack of books on his desk. I could hear as he wriggled out of his shirt, wrestled off his pants, the sound of his belt buckle jangling in my ear, and finally plopped down on his bed.

Our beds sat parallel to one another, on opposite sides of the room against facing walls, some eight feet apart, side to side. My back was turned to him, but I could see the wall in front of me light up as he opened his laptop in the dark, the glow of the screen casting a pale glare across the room. I tried to ignore the clacking of the typing, the whirr of the computer fan, the “HEGH” of his coughs. He’d been on his computer before while I was sleeping, his back against the wall opposite me.

But this time the typing suddenly stopped. And then I heard it. The faint sounds of moaning emanating from headphones, the unmistakable whimpers of some poor actress whose dreams had been so different once long ago, who was left with no choice but to groan her way through a video that ended up in the bowels of the Internet and eventually on the laptop of some college boy who drunkenly stumbled home after striking out for the hundredth night in a row but was nevertheless determined to release whatever pressure he’d spent the evening bringing upon himself. Her muted screams punctuated the room like a tiny subway train screeching along its tracks. “Oh no,” I thought to myself, my eyes wide open, staring into the white of the wall in front of me. “This isn’t happening.” And then, there it was, the distinct sound of palm stroking lotioned flesh, the sound of a wooden spoon mixing a bowl of creamy macaroni and cheese, radiating from Troy’s lap.

I lay there in dazed silence, unsure how to process what was happening behind me, or why it was happening, or how to get it to stop.

Now, I certainly don’t profess to be an expert at college masturbation, or its protocols, and I certainly don’t profess to understand the first thing about straight men, or their curious behaviors, or what exactly they feel comfortable doing in the presence of other men. But I do feel confident enough in my own extensive experience on the subject to point out that there does exist a set of unspoken norms to which all college men implicitly agree, and at the risk of betraying its unwritten nature, they are as follows: always knock before entering a room, or at the very least flounder with your keys at the door for a few seconds to signal that you’re about to enter; if possible, post your schedule in public view so your dorm-fellow might better understand which times you’ll be away and when you might return; avoid shower masturbation, as it puts strain on dorm plumbing; and by all means—and this one should really, truly go without saying—keep your dick in your pants when another person is in the room, be they unconscious or otherwise!