This post was submitted by Zack Rosen

Zack’s Thursday Music and Culture Column, The Indie Rock Fag, has been preempted by a very special bonus Zack’s Ramblings. Enjoy.

Two days ago I posted a list of 8 Guys You’ll Meet at The Gay Gym. In that list, I mentioned that I appreciate  the non-alcoholic, non-late-night social opportunities that my gym provides. Despite the fact that their music selection is like a Dick Clark top 40 countdown on poppers, it is still overall a dignified, productive space to meet interesting men.

A gay gym’s locker room, however, is not. It is a quotidian horror show of the oddest, most egregious, and downright bizarre behavior you will see in a gay man outside of pride weekend. Locker rooms are all about blurring the public and the private – nudity and decorum, the ability to be dirty while getting clean – and some guys boundaries of normal behavior falter when faced with such a dichotomy. Below is a list of 9 guys you might meet in your locker room. And as usual, this is meant to be a joke. If you’re going to call me an asshole or a homophobe or a crumb-bum it’ll fall on deaf ears.

1. The “Oompa Loompa” Guy

If you wear your sunglasses at night its probably because you are hanging out with this guy. He only goes to the gym to take advantage of its tanning facilities, and as a result he maintains a nice orange hue twelve months a year. If you spend enough time in his proximity there is a good chance that you will get tan too.

2.  The “Foreigner Who Thinks It’s a Bathhouse” Guy

He might come from Europe, where that kind of establishment is less underground. Or Arlington, where the “gay gym” is a misunderstood urban legend. Wherever he’s from, this guy doesn’t quite get that some towels and a sauna do not a sex club make. Whether his solicitation is subtle — oops, my boner fell out of my towel and now its pointing at you!— or overt — running his hand down your thigh— a firm “this is not that kind of establishment!” should be enough to get your out of harms way.

3. The “Make Yourself At Home Guy.”

While a locker room does have many of the amenities of your home bathroom, it is not actually your home bathroom. This fact is lost on the “Make Yourself At Home Guy.” Either his own plumbing is being fixed or he has an odd sense of public behavior, because he wears pungent conditioner in the sauna, shaves in the sink, pees in the shower and then spends forty minutes making mirror faces and fixing his hair as if the whole free world can’t see him. This is most likely the same guy that carries reading material into the gym bathroom, shame-free.

4. The “Take a Picture, It’ll Last Longer” Guy

In terms of locker room manners, you could ask for nothing better than this guy. He won’t make any inappropriate comments, he won’t stand too close to you at your locker, he won’t even let his hands linger anywhere untoward as he soaps up. The only thing stopping him from being a perfect gentleman is the fact that he stares at you as if the secret to life itself is buried in your ass. Like being in an old episode of Scooby Doo, where you feel creeped out because one of the painting’s eyes are following you around the room, you are always pretty sure that this guy is out there somewhere looking at you. It could be from behind a towel, it could be from six mirrors away. You just know he’s there.

5. The “Horrifying Underwear” Guy

So how do you treat your penis? Do you wrap it up in simple white cotton, letting its majestic twists and turns provide the visual flair? Perhaps you’re a sensible man who wears trunks, or a swinger in loose-fitting boxers. Or do you take a piece of Lycra, bluer than a May sky at noon, with the buttocks removed, and put it on to tell the world “My crotch is neon! My crotch is a tropical bird! My crotch is electric, boogie woogie woogie woogie?”  If you answered yes to the third question, you are probably “Horrifying Underwear” guy. Kudos, though, for the fact that you often blend seamlessly into the rest of society. Most people won’t realize your true nature until long after you’ve won their trust.

6. The “Prune” Guy

To you, a gym is a complicated network of aerobic machines, free weights and medicine balls. To this guy, though, a gym is two simple locales: A shower and a Sauna. Nothing more, nothing less. If this guy is not in the sauna he is in the shower. If he is not in the shower he is in the sauna. If only all humans were so uncomplicated in their motivations! Since this guy never seems to actually work out you can be relatively assured of finding him engaged in one of those two aquatic pasttimes. However, I caution you not to get too attached to him. The strain that so much steam puts on his heart means that you will spend the afternoon scouring emergency rooms and obituary columns if you don’t see him around.

7. The “Never-Nude” Guy

This seems to have been trained at Quantico in the arts of undetectability, because he can change from his street clothes to his workout clothes to a towel and back without you seeing so much as one glimpse of his naked body. No matter how cute or confident he is, he will slink around two towels, a bathrobe or even a burqa to avoid showing one glimpse of bare skin. For this reason, he tends to be very frustrating to the “Take a picture, it’ll last longer” guy.

8. The “Always-Nude” Guy

Polar opposite of the previous entry, this guy is so enamored with the beauty of the male form that its a miracle he even gets dressed to take the metro back home. He’s naked in the shower, in the sauna, at his locker, bending over to grab some water, hugging you hello, doing his pre-workout stretches and, in some terrible cases, engaging you in an extended conversation about politics or world hunger.

9. The “Priapism” Guy

It is a miracle this guy has not passed out in public, because the amount of blood used to sustain his massive, never-ending erection virtually guarantees that his brain has been left high and dry. While you may first find his eternally tumescent member to be shocking or exciting when you see it in the shower, it quickly loses its lustre when you realize that it is as much a part of his character as having brown hair. It’s there in the shower, yes, but its also there in the sauna, at his locker, in his kickboxing class and in the bus on the way home. Some people have Jiminy Cricket to accompany them through life, and some have their boners.

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