Now the twin madnesses of the Marathon and the Boat Race are over I have started going back to the gym for some exercise. I have to somehow counteract the damage I am doing to myself at night-time.
It's been a while since I've been here (which is how these gyms really make their money) and I had forgotten how weird the behaviour of other men in the changing room can be.
Last year I wrote about the naked man applying moisturiser to his entire body in a communal part of the changing room. I thought that would be the most bizarre thing I would see here. But I was wrong.
Today, I was back in that same area, fully clothed, drying my hair and then applying moisturiser to my face and hands (and no-where else), when out of the corner of my eye I saw a portly middle-aged man coming into the area and standing at the mirror next to mine. He was completely naked, but obviously some people are comfortably with this and I let it pass.
I didn't look at him - I have no interest in the naked bodies of fat middle-aged men and if I did I would just look at myself in the mirror (in private, I might add)- but I was aware that he was drying his hair with the hair dryer. No problem with that. I was doing the same. Admittedly I had my clothes on, but I wasn't going to make a fuss. Different folks have different strokes.
As I was about to have made even more clear to me.
I happened to glance to the side a few seconds later and observed that the man was now using the hair dryer to dry his pubic hair. I looked away a bit stunned and made an audible involuntary laugh. I would say this wa inappropriate behaviour for a communal area. And slightly distasteful. People were going to use that hair dryer to dry their head hair after him. Admittedly there was no actual contact between him and the dryer, but still; it seemed wrong.
I tried to ignore this peculiar display, wondering if the man had simply mislaid his towel or whether this was some kind of odd courtship ritual for my benefit.
Personally I have always found that my bodily hair gets dry without the need to use an electrical device, but maybe I am the strange one here. Maybe everyone does this. And maybe it is normal behaviour to do such a thing whilst in the company of others. But I was quite shocked.
I didn't want to keep looking, but obviously I had to cast an occasional look in his direction, just to see what crazy thing this short nude man would get up to next.
The next time I looked he was drying his chest hair. I was quite relieved about this.
A few moments earlier a man using a hair dryer to dry hair that was elsewhere than his head would have seemed odd to me, but now I had seen something so much worse that the electrical drying of chest hair seemed mundane and humdrum. And it didn't seem as unpleasant or anti-social. Perhaps I had imagined the whole pubic drying incident. I had only been looking askance. He might just have been holding the hair dryer down for a second whilst he combed hie hair or something.
But, no! Within seconds he had lowered the dryer again. Clearly his genital hair had not been fully dried out in the previous encounter and required more hot air upon it.
This time he had got even bolder. He had lifted up his penis with one hand and was now pointing the hair dryer at his testicles.
I longed for a time when the worst thing I had seen was someone just drying their pubic hair with a hair dryer. Now I had seen something on a whole new level.
Let's face it, no-one's testicles are that hairy that they require hot air to dry them. The man must have been getting some kind of prurient excitement out of it all. Though not too much, as I was clearly able to see that he wasn't outwardly aroused.
I am not a prude, but I think there are some things that should remain private or shared only amopngst consenting adults. And drying of testicle hair must surely be one of those things. I feared where that nozzle was going to be pointing next. There was at least one hairy crevice that, to my knowledge must still be damp. I had to escape.
As I left the unusual man was now in the process of drying his feet with the hair dryer. The soles of his feet. The one part of his body (apart from his balding crown) that had no hair on it whatsoever. The other things, maybe you could let slide. He could still argue that he was technically using a hair dryer for its intended purpose - drying hair. But this was a bridge too far.
He looked at me as I left. He wasn't even ashamed. He didn't seem aware that he had behaved in an unacceptable way. Why was he allowed to behave like that here, when if he had done this in any other public place then he would have been sent to prison? What is it about a locker room that makes men think that they can apply lotion and hot air to their bodies willy-nilly (literally) and not upset anyone?
I am scarred for life and also starting to worry that maybe my pubic hair and feet are damper than tehy should be.
