Naked in the Locker Room: voices from the past 1
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Something has been bugging me for quite some time, but I can't exactly bring up the subject with the culprits: What's with all the guys who resist wearing towels in the locker rooms of athletic clubs? I'm using the plural because, though I only belong to one club, I assume the phenomenon is widespread. I'm not a prude, but there's something really creepy about flabby 60-year-olds standing shaving/gabbing/strolling etc. buck naked when they could easily wrap towels around their waists. My theory, for what it's worth, is that many of these people have not participated in high school or college athletics, thereby learning a few important things about locker room etiquette. I ran track and xc in college not long ago, and everybody wore towels except, naturally, in the shower. There's just no reason to display your garbage to the world if you don't have to. If you're one of the no-towel types, I'd like to hear why you do it.
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Women do it too. Pretty gross.
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naked guy in the locker room who invades my space and insists and getting far to close to me or others is truly disgusting. serious social violation.
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Personally I wear a towel all the time except for the few seconds I don't have to while getting dressed or getting in the shower, but that is only because Flagpole Willy cares about everyone and their feelings. Don't want everyone else feeling badly about their shortcomings you know.
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People that age grew up with different norms for locker room behavior. When they were kids they actually showered after gym class. I doubt it was because they lack your vast experience as an athlete; if anything, people who never spent time in locker rooms tend to cower in corners. Besides, if I haven't showered yet, I don't wrap my towel around my sweaty body. Why get the towel dirty to avoid offending your sexual insecurities?
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It was easy to wrap a towel around myself when I was a young runner. When you grow a gut, you can't keep the damn towel on, and it just falls on the floor anyway.
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This is an interesting viewpoint. I am a twenty-something and in college and in
high school, the people who wore towels, of which I once was, were looked upon with contempt and disgust. I think the rationale was that those individuals had very small penises and were hiding them or else they were afraid of revealing their erections it was presumed they might be having (although I am not sure a towel would do much to hide an erection, that was the logic used by teenagers). Before long, I ditched the towel and found it didn't really bother me or anyone else. I personally am not offended by any person who goes without a towel nor do I scoff at those who carry one. It seems pretty irrelevant. I don't know what social norms are expected in a place like a locker room, but I either don't know them or I ignore them. On an interesting side note, I went to a female friends apartment last night to spend some time there, and upon entering, I found one of them completely nude in her shower--natually--and one of her other roommates standing there combing her hair in the same bathroom with the door wide open. Being a gentleman, I chose not to stand there and gawk but I did see enough to figure out that neither girl appeared disconcerted or bothered by the one naked female. I guess this means girls, or at least these two, don't appear to have the same hangup guys do. S&V
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S&V, Next time you visit your friends please bring a digital camera and snap a shot to share with us all. It might not be the gentlemanly thing to do, but it would be the manly/humanitarian thing to do (unless you friend's naked showering friend is a sorry sight. If that is the case, I feel for you).
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In college, I always enjoyed the freedom of wandering around the locker room with my johnson unleashed. The locker room was sort of a johnson-free zone-- our private space, where we could crank up some tunes after a workout and let things swing.... Now there were guys who would do things like wear sandles into the shower... these dudes usually whipped their towels tightly around their small packages immediately upon exiting, usually after a nervous 20 second shower. These guys usually snuck in an extra half mile on the warmdown to hit their log goal, and usually had to get back to their dorm right away to study engineering. They let loose maybe once per season, getting ridiculously trashed at team parties. Other guys took it too far, sitting around reading shit, going from locker to locker talking trash, laying out on benches, and in one memorable case, eating a tuna fish sandwich, completely buck naked, almost luxuriating in their manhood. Most of these guys did pretty well with the ladies, as I recall, and often drank heavily on weeknights at local townie bars. They sometimes initiated interesting discussions, such as the relative merits of attending class commando-style, their favorite "nookie pants," and their perception of various ladies' preferences with regard to respective johnsons.
There was rarely any open package-checking, but once in a while, some big swinging dick would declare himself king of the johnsons and call out a particular dude for a faceoff. I don't recall any of these competitions ever getting off the ground, but there was generally money wagered, sides chosen up and lots of poiontless dick comments fired back and forth. I fell somewhere in between, feeling pity for the dudes who were ashamed of their action, but wishing some of these other guys would pack it in from time to time. Nowadays, I basically change quickly in small stalls, usually in a hurry. I miss the locker room atmosphere, but upon reflection, its probably not because of the johnsons. Now I'm in my 30's and haven't wandered around naked in front of other guys in a while, except for a trip to Europe, but that's different. I remember a July 4th barbecue with some bare-assed antics too, but there were chicks there, so I guess that doesn't count either. I'd welcome an old-timers day, I suppose, although I'd probably be more turned off by the guts involved, including my own,than anything else. I don't know what it means, but as I write this from my office, I bet my colleagues outside would be shocked by my bare-assed history and would think I was a bit freewheeling, which makes me somehow feel like I'm in the wrong job. Sometimes I'll come out of the shower in my place and walk around without a towel, and then realize that the curtains are open and my neighbors can probably see. I'll feel a momentary embarassment and go for the blinds, but then I'll say the hell with it, this is my place and my johnson, so what do I care?
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Ex-Ivy, Didn't I catch you hiding under the bench in the sauna of the men's locker room at Bally's last week. You really WAX reminiscent about your old locker room.
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Americans are very uncomfortable with their bodies and their sexuality.
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I have no problems with dudes walking around bare ass nekid. The ones that get me are those who bring their junk a little too close to you and/or others with changing and conversing. There are just certain levels of proper locker room decorum.
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rediculous... my god... if you cannot stand to see the guys' packages then don't look if you truely don't want. just cuz you see a guys wang doesn't mean that you're gay or that they are trying to make people uncomforatable by having it out. Our team walks around naked all the time and we just have a good laugh about it and don't think about it anymore. it makes for some good jokes and what not. get over your fear of being thought of as gay and rock out with your cock out
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