At least every other day I stand naked in a room full of other naked men. What? - yes, it's true.
I joined a gym a few months ago or you might say that I joined a club. My first investigation in to this
new culture began with the actual exercise part which is fun once I got a routine down. How not to hurt ones self
is day one; how not to look like a dork is day two; how to benifit and feel good is day three... the rest is
just sweating. The real physical (and I would add psychological and maybe emotional) acclimantion happens
on the lower level. The depths of the dreaded locker room. The Locker room situation was the only cause for my
hesitation in joining a gym. For reasons I'm contractually unable to provide, I had to join one.
Do you remember summer camp? Out of all the awkward, pubescent moments in my summer camp experiences (I had
many at day camp) getting changed after swim was not one of them. Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to care anyhow.
Well nobody seems to care at the gym either.... except me, at first. Man, It's weird! Every body type, age, ethnicity, smell, personality all walk'n around nude hang'n out. As some of you know, I have particular squimishes about particular things.
First of all, that shit isn't sanitary. I put a towel down on everything as if I was at a nudist colony. I even keep a dust mask
in my locker for emergecy smell situations. I think this gym (a big chain one in fact) is considered really nice too, it's in Park Slope. But nobody seems to have a problem parking their naked bum on the benches. Do women do this?
The funny thing about this new world is that I'm getting comfortable with it. At first I thought the locker room scene
was all machismo but it's not (the free weight room is where all the testosterone is pent up). It's just people being
comfortable. The ancient Greeks and Romans invented this type of leisure. That leisure extended in to bath houses
and saunas. Here's a bit of interesting lingo about the sauna. The yiddish slang word for sauna, as spoken by many a
pop-pop Herman, is "Schwitz". As in to sweat, as in "oh god i'm schwitzing like a pudding".
Most of the jews in concentration camps during the holocaust were gassed in sauna-like rooms... in Auschwitz.
Pretty scary huh? Schwitz - Auschwitz.
Anyhow, I've gotten over the socialized group nudity of the locker room. I even feel better for it.
