Concerns About Old-Dude Nakedness in Gym Locker Rooms
by Greg Oldfield
I recently walked into the locker room at my gym to one of the old dudes blow-drying his hair naked in front of the mirror. While his gray chest hair fluttered and his white cottage-cheese ass jiggled, his junk scraped across the counter top. The same counter where the rest of us wash our hands, brush our teeth, or pop the occasional pimple. I wasn’t shocked. I’ve seen it dozens of times, mostly by older men who shared the communal high school showers in the ’60s and ’70s, snapping towels into unsuspecting butt cheeks while tossing around the same curly cue-covered sliver of soap that lasted all semester.
I’m not saying my friends and I didn’t engage in Porky’s-inspired tomfoolery in middle school, too, but that was a closed circle with boundaries. Whenever we threw Chenko’s skivvies on top of the fluorescent light fixture after swim class, someone at least got them down before the bell. Even Davy Rosado’s water-soaked rat tails that left lash marks had their limits. But nobody walked around wearing only shower sandals, towel over one shoulder, whistling Sinatra.
I was exposed to old-dude nakedness at an early age. When I was a freshman in high school, my friend, Gonzo, and I worked out together at our local dive gym. Back then, we threw our jackets and keys in an empty locker and hit the floor. We didn’t have time to shower afterwards, lacked the organization to pack a bag, and didn’t really know how to work out yet. We tried exercises we’d learned watching Kiana and Gilad on ESPN, so we didn’t sweat that much either. And even if we did, we rode our bikes, so we’d air-dry on the way home.
Yeah, we were gross, but not as gross as the middle-aged guy we walked in on naked shaving. He had a waxed body that looked like he’d just come from a tanning bed. The kind of guy you’d see on the cover of Muscle & Fitness. His friend walked in behind us and said, “Hey, Larry, you’re looking pretty tan.”
Larry, turned, razor in one hand, a face full of shaving cream, flapped his penis in our direction, and said, “What, this?”
Gonzo snorted, I looked away, and we grabbed our keys and walked out. Then changed our workout time for the rest of the summer. I’m sure Larry’s joke is still killing it in a locker room somewhere.
Now that I’m over forty, I’ve become more tolerable of some peculiar happenings at the gym. The morning adrenaline junkies who favor Charmed or CSI over the news or SportsCenter. Bench press guy who stares down any male that comes within twenty-feet of his girl. The overweight trainer peddling protein shakes. The hoarder who uses three machines at once, waves anyone off when they try to work in, and sits down with his phone for five minutes before his next set. The one who sweats profusely, then refuses to wipe down after he’s finished. The scale that provides a ten-pound range instead of an exact weight. The music in my earbuds competing with the gym’s speakers, the trainer’s boom box, and the ladies talking over their treadmills. But the old-dude nakedness is on another level.
One day recently, post-workout, I had to cut between two old dudes in my row of lockers conversing across the center bench. One guy was dressed for work, shirt and tie, bag over his shoulder, inching toward the door. The other one was wearing a dress shirt, unbuttoned, and socks, casually talking about stocks or Trump or whatever with one leg up on the bench. No underwear. I mean, who puts socks on first? Turned the whole one-pant-leg-at-a-time analogy on its head. What’s worse is the guy has an advertisement near the entrance of the gym, so every time I see his face I don’t think about financial planning.
Some mornings, I’ve had to casually duck around the guy staring at the reflection of his obliques so I could get a towel from the cabinet underneath or walk around the guy bent over toweling off in the middle of the shower aisle. Once, the guy in the shower stall across from me was lathering up like he’d spilled engine grease all over himself. The forceful suctions sent me to my locker early without washing my hair. Last year, while I was measuring the success of my new diet, the naked guy on his way to the sauna commented that my underwear probably added half a pound. I mean, how much do boxer shorts really weigh and who said I was training for an MMA bout?
Hair brushing, teeth brushing, fingernail trimming—where is the boundary line for nakedness? Maybe it’s about time we write a guidebook. Or create some kind of locker room HOA with board-enforced bylaws. Yes, it doesn’t help that gym towels are the size of washcloths, but larger guys can double-up. Sometimes, I wonder if locker room nakedness will resolve itself through attrition. I can’t remember the last time someone my age I didn’t know joked that it “looks cold out today” while I was toweling off. Is there anyone else in my generation who finds this behavior excessive? Or creepy? But if open nakedness in the gym locker room is a rite of passage for older men, then consider me a future investor in a home gym.
Greg Oldfield is a teacher, coach, and writer from the Philadelphia area. His stories have appeared in Hobart, Porcupine Literary, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Carve. He also writes about soccer for the Florida Cup and the Brotherly Game and can be found on Twitter under @GregOldfield21.