Wet Towels and Menacing Mustaches
In an earlier post, I wrote about my fear and awkwardness about being naked with other men. I thought I never would figure out why it was such a big deal. I took philosophy classes back in college in which the professors would ask us why humans are so fascinated with the opposite sex’s nakedness. I was more preoccupied with why I had this weird hang-up about the same sex’s nakedness. A short time after posting that story, though, I had an experience that reminded me of my first experience standing around naked with other guys. It was that first experience that affected how I would feel about this subject for decades to come.

This recent experience, which I will tell you about shortly, reminded me of my first day in 7th grade P.E. class, when, in dropping my towel as I exited the shower, I received a sting on my ass from Gene Franklin’s wet towel. Franklin was a towering 8th grader who wore a white sweatband around his head of long, brown wavy hair. Whether he was in P.E. or any other class, he always wore that sweatband. It was as if it was some kind of Bjorn Borg gang sign. As I held my burning ass cheek, he laughed at me in what I remember to be a deep post-pubescent “ho, ho, ho,” like an evil Santa Claus. His demonic bellowing abruptly stopped when Mr. Homes, the P.E. teacher, walked out of his office and asked what was going on. In unison, we all replied, “Nothing.” I looked over at Franklin as he gave me a threatening stare. Seventh grade P.E. was an exercise in terror. “What would Franklin or any of the other 8th grade thugs do next at my expense?” I often worried.

I ran into Franklin in my early college days as he was bagging my groceries at the local Albertsons. He had shorter hair and no sweatband. He also had stopped growing around the time he lit my ass on fire with that towel and now was about my height—no longer the junior high giant. His mustache, which once looked as mature and menacing as Burt Reynolds’ did, especially for an 8th grader, now looked as harmless as Super Mario’s. He didn’t recognize me as he franticly bagged my purchases while the shift manager barked at him about some other matter. Of course, it was a different time, and as harmless as he looked handling my peanut butter, that didn’t take away from how threatening he had been back in junior high. When he asked if I needed help to my car, I thought for a second that he recognized me. Before I realized he didn’t, I took the bag from him and snickered, “No, I think I can handle it, buddy.” Those two seconds of superiority netted about five minutes of embarrassment when I realized, walking to my car, that he probably made more money than I did.

I was once, in my own way, a menace; wet towels were not my vehicle of pain and intimidation, but an Olympic-size pool. I used to belong to a club that was located directly across the street from my current job. I swam laps during lunch in the indoor pool located in the building’s basement. I didn’t like the fact that a couple of fellow employees regularly played racquetball there at the same time I swam, but I avoided the shower scenes because the racquetball guys played a half-hour longer than I swam, anyway, contrary to my wife’s medical opinion, I considered the time spent in the pool a bath. I just quickly dried myself and showered-off the chlorine hours later, when I got home.

When I entered the pool, the water was placid. I would marvel at how the two or three older men could do laps while barely disturbing the water; it was as though they were knives gracefully slicing the water. After I had finished my laps, the pool looked like a tropical storm—I could hear the other swimmers gasping for air as they turned their heads to breathe but instead of air received a mouthful of water from the whitecaps I had generated. When I stopped for a break, I could hear the water violently slapping against the sides of the pool. After I had established myself as Hurricane Jocko, I noticed the swimmers would quickly leave the pool when I entered it, preferring not to inhale a gallon of chlorinated water for lunch.

Today, I am fortunate that most of the time I am alone when I undress in the locker room at my health club. Still, with everyone’s New Year’s resolutions, the club has gotten busier and I have to deal with that byproduct. One racquetball guy takes up more than half the bench with all his gear. He may have arrived when no one else was in that area of the locker room, but he does not attempt to move any of his crap when anyone comes in from working out. His items are stretched out, as though he was taking inventory, and he does not gather them when I need to use the bench. Of course, I could politely ask him to consolidate his stuff, but passive-aggressive folk like me don’t work that way—we prefer to bitch to ourselves.

Then there’s Mr. Organized; he will come in when I am using the area and sit too close to me, open his personal locker, pull out two identical opaque plastic containers about 9”x12”x4” each, and place them on the floor. His personal footprint has now doubled. Then he opens the lids, letting the covers fall where they may (like on my foot). Looking down annoyed, I can’t help but notice the contents of these containers are neater than my dresser drawers at home are and the articles in the containers are placed together in an arrangement that would make a Tetris Master green with envy. Still, the guy is in my way, and anyway, who folds gym clothes?

All of this crap was manageable, but the sting of Junior High P.E. came back during an incident at my club a few months ago. I had just come back from working out to find four men in different stages of undress all going about their own business in our 25’ x 10’ niche in the locker room. After walking around a few half-naked men, I noticed a guy standing next to my lockers talking about his BMW motorcycle. (Oh yeah, about the two lockers: I have a small assigned locker with a built-in combination lock, like everyone else, and I use a tall locker, open to all members on a visit-by-visit basis, to hang up my street clothes.) I’ve seen this guy many times before. He stands out because of his clothing—red corduroys, not too many men have the nuggets to wear red cords. I also couldn’t help but notice that he compensates for an unfortunate face by always looking good, whether he is wearing a designer silk shirt and slacks or blue jeans and what looks like an intentionally stretched-out wool sweater. But he wasn’t wearing his red cords or silk shirt now. He was carrying on a conversation about road bikes, buck-naked and leaning on my tall locker and about two inches from my assigned locker. Unlike all the other men in the locker room, this guy wasn't dressing himself; he acted as if he came to the club naked. I sat down on the bench next to him and as I leaned over to dial my combination, his business was right next to my face. I quickly pulled back, hoping he would, in turn, back up and give me some room; but no, he kept on talking about his Beamer.

Since I’m always on a tight schedule—trying to jam in a decent workout, shower, and get out to the bus stop inside of one hour—I couldn’t just get up, walk around the corner to the sinks and apply the club’s various aftershaves, lotions, and hair gels while I waited for Cycle World to finish his road test findings. The logical thing to do would have been to ask the guy to back up a skosh, but I was too pissed off, and my passive-aggressiveness was now in 5th gear. I attempted to read the numbers on my locker from a distance but my glasses were in my bag, inside the locker Red Cords was leaning on. Losing patience and time, I leaned over again and began to go through the combination—all with the guy’s junk just inches away from my face. Flustered, it took two attempts to get the combination right—like I misdialed twice intentionally.

When I successfully cracked the combination, I swung the locker door open faster than usual. Red Cords took a casual half step back and continued his evaluation of his bike without a beat. I took out my laundry bag from the locker, after taking off my exercise shoes, placed them in the locker, and slammed it shut. I dressed down while listening to how superior BMW drive shafts are compared to Japanese road bikes, then placed my workout clothes in the laundry bag, dropped the bag in the linen shoot, and walked to the showers.

By the time I returned from the showers, the man who had been listening to Red Cords’ road test was fully dressed and was now leaning toward the exit, but Red Cords kept talking, unmoved by his audience’s obvious body language. Red Cords, who hadn’t put on one stitch of clothing, was now talking about his Beamer’s exceptional breaks. I slipped in next to Red Cords, not fully dry. I had been rehearsing what I was going to do if the road test was still going, so when I marched up to my other locker—the one Red Cords was leaning on—and quickly grabbed and violently yanked on the latch, he removed his hand from the door and quickly stepped back. The road test discussion came to an abrupt halt. A split-second later, when I swung the locker door open, he jumped back a half step more. His one-man audience, hearing the break in the statistics, said a quick “Gotta go, man. Take it easy,” and left.

Our area of the locker room became dead quiet, except for the cacophony of muffled mobile phone rings occasionally going off inside lockers all around us. I put on my clothes about two feet away from Red Cords, as though the building was on fire, and picked up speed the more layers I slapped on my wet body. I was waiting for a remark on how an “excuse me” was in order but it never came. I left the locker room with my shoes in my hand, stepping in puddles of cold water as I walked briskly for the door. I put my shoes over my soaked socks when I hit the landing between the second and first floors—I didn’t care.

In the lobby, popcorn was popping. I ate a bag there as I waited the five or so minutes before leaving for the bus stop. I kept running that locker door-opening scene in my head; “What did he think? Did he care?” I kept my face buried in a copy of Men’s Health, too afraid I might lift my head to see him staring at me. A few minutes passed and I looked up to see what time it was and there was Red Cords, talking with some other guy, his head directly under the clock. Red Cords must have thought I was looking at him—maybe even staring him down. At that moment, I noticed for the first time that he had a mustache, just as menacing as Gene Franklin’s. Crap, I thought to myself, I have spent my whole life trying not to make enemies—avoiding the Gene Franklins of the world and situations like this very one and now I share a very small locker space with Gene Franklin’s incarnate, but wet towels are usually not the weapon of choice among grown men and that’s good news…I think.