This post was submitted by Zack Rosen

At my predominantly gay gym in the nexus of the Dupont/Adams Morgan/U Street homotopia, a guy can encounter some pretty strange things. Especially in the locker room. You can see penises in colors, shapes and sizes that you didn’t think existed in nature. You can smell the guy who thought it was ok to wear some kind of toxic coconut conditioner into the sauna, creating Mexico City air quality within its confines. And several days ago, you would have heard someone yell “NO! THAT IS NOT A CONSENSUS DECISION,” loudly enough to permeate the sleepy chamber of the tanning bed, to disturb the “ohm shanti”s of the third floor yoga class, and to function as ultrasound therapy and cure a heretofore stubborn Charlie Horse afflicting some hapless squatter.

The man speaking these words was, as you might’ve guessed, me. While eight years of varsity athletics usually leads me to treat the locker room as a sort of secular temple, where one does not raise their voice or pee in the shower, occasionally, I will get caught off guard. In this particular case, all it took was a highly unusual request.

I will not delve too deeply into this man’s looks or personality, as it is not germane to what he asked me. I will just say that a strict unwritten code of respect exists at a naked place like a gym locker room and the fellow in question frequently breaks it. That code is, “We are all looking at each other naked, but we will be subtle about it.” I had gotten used to this man’s habits of standing next to me while I changed, clearing his throat and clattering locker doors so I would look over, and so I usually kept strict horseblinders on when he was in my vicinity, doing my best Helen Keller impression to ensure a smooth transition from naked to dressed to out the door and safely headed home.

But why, oh why, this time did I have to break my rule for just a second? Why did I look over to see the man in a towel, appraising me as a cat would a goldfish wrapped in catnip?

Like many young gay men, I’ve developed a stable of graceful stock responses to unsolicited come-ons. But nothing prepared me for when the spandex-clad satyr sidled up to me with all the warmth of a Ladytron song and muttered, “Mmmm… you should shave your crotch… or your legs!”

I lost all that decorum and unleashed a negative response at a decibel level usually reserved for referees.

Let’s pretend for a moment that I didn’t think that male body hair was the most beautiful thing ever and that it’s unnecessary shaving was a mortal turnoff. We’ll instead examine why it’s ok to ask a relative stranger to manhandle his own Charlie Browns. I believe that all gay spaces are sexualized – as gay, by definition, is a sexual minority – but not all of them should be sexual. What I mean is that if you get a group of gay men together you will feel the same low hum of flirtation that exists in any hetero coed singles space like a bar, a book club or, really, the whole damn world. In places like this, people chat and ask each other out without giving it much of a second thought. As a prelude to eventual sex, I think its safe to call this kind of behavior sexualized.

But it’s not sexual. I know there are gyms in DC with co-ed saunas, but I know that no straight man would ever, in a million years, think of saying something like, “Nice pussy” or, “Your breasts would look better in a tank top” to the girl sitting next to them. So it amazes me how quickly gay men can ignore the thin (yet existent) veneer of society in our supposedly polite gathering spots.

And let’s say I did think this was an ok thing to ask me. Would I whip out a razor right then and there and say, “Landing strip or Nike swoosh: Your choice?” Would I encounter him at the treadmill and show him the mass of red bumps and razor burn covering my lower body and say, “This is for you” while licking my lips and rubbing my palm over the ever-growing lump in my shorts? No! Because not all gay life is a 1980s porn.

So people, think before you make obvious and grossly-phrased advances in public spaces: Do I know this person well enough to ask? Have they given me any signals that they are interested? Is the this kind of circumstance that calls for overly clinical dirty talk?

If the answer is no, just walk away.

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