| jef st de lore | |||
| Jef St. De Lore is a columnist juggling work, grad school, and friends. He always makes time to meet potential husbands and lovers... or at least write about them. | |||
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April 06, 2005
As a kid, I played a lot of team sports and so I spent a fair amount of time in locker rooms getting ready for practice, a track meet or just hanging out with the guys. And of course, I experienced many group shower scenes during my high school and college years.
I never had a problem with group showers. I wasn’t shy and didn’t have many body issues. I was one of the lucky ones whose body developed “on schedule.” Puberty treated me okay. The hair, muscles, and such all kicked into gear without too many awkward feelings or frustrations. And okay, I confess; I was one of the horny young men who actually looked forward to showering at school. I got to hang out with other naked male athletes. C’mon...that’s like the beginning of many great porn flicks.
While showering, I was often guilty of having “wandering eyes.” I wasn’t lewd about it. I didn’t stare at the guys or jerk off in the locker room. But I did develop a “down low” approach to cruising in the primarily heterosexual environment (men’s locker room) that allowed me to check out the naked bodies around me without getting beat up.
One of the fears that haunted me while I enjoyed the “eye candy” offered in the men’s locker room was that my body would betray me and would expose me as a homo. I wasn’t worried about my walk. (I don’t think I walked with much of a swish.) And while my voice might have had some “gay leanings” and sounded a bit too energetic when compared to others at my school, I feared that I would get an unscheduled erection in the men’s locker room in front of my teammates. (I wasn’t as worried about the ones that popped up in class, church, or around town – the tights jeans of the late 80s/early 90s kept everything in place no matter how big it grew.)
Thankfully my fears never came to pass. I never got an erection in a group shower setting nor was I caught checking out naked athletes in the locker room except in college. That was by other gay men and that’s another story for a different column.
Any way...now that I’m back in graduate school, I get to work out with students and staff members. At times, I flash back to my youth and all of the questions, desires, and fears I had when I was here 15 years ago. I still see the men who wander around the gym in a towel, walking up and down the rows looking for? (You know, I’m not quite sure what they want). I see the “sauna whores,” the men who must not know that we have a swimming pool, weight room and other facilities at school because these guys show up, strip naked, throw on a towel, and then live in the sauna for hours. You can usually pick them out right away. They are naked when you show up at the gym and they are still naked (but more sweaty and flushed) by the time you are leaving post-workout. But the guys who make me smile are the ones who remind me of my younger years, the ones I see questioning their sexuality while struggling with curiosity and over active erections. Guys like Tom.
Tom (not his real name) is in the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program at my school. I see Tom quite frequently at the gym. He has a rock hard body, great face, and a friendly demeanor. He usually hangs out with other guys in the ROTC program. They joke around, work out together, and ...shower together. And when he thinks no one is looking, I see Tom checking out other men in the shower and locker room. He’s very secretive about his cruising but having experienced men’s locker rooms since the 80s, I know how to separate the clueless looking around of straight guys from the secretive stares of a closeted, questioning young man.
I feel like I understand where Tom is coming from. I remember the doubts, fears, and questions that come with being gay and growing up in an environment that doesn’t support diversity. Sometimes I just want to walk up to Tom and let him know that it’s okay that he’s gay, that he’s attracted to men, and that his feelings appear to be different from many of his friends. But I know better. Tom needs to come to terms with sexuality on his own time and in his own way. Any words from me would be unwelcome. If anything, they’d be feared. Since I only see Tom in the locker room and/or showers, starting up a conversation about homosexuality would probably throw him deeper in the closet.
I don’t know if Tom will ever come out of the closet. He’s in the military so he has it tougher than those of us who work in fields that don’t prosecute sexual diversity. I hope that he doesn’t end up living a double life (wife at home, male lovers on the side). I hope that when Tom is ready to seek answers to his feelings that he has supportive friends around him and/or resources that welcome him like I did when I was a youth with locker room dreams, questions and fears.
Tom needs people in his life who will tell him that being gay is okay. He needs being gay “normalized” for him through media images, legislation, and conversations with friends, other students, faculty, and family members. I’m just not in a position to help him out. I wish I was. All I can do is be out about my sexuality with those in my life, support queer friendly organizations and legislation with my time and money, and hope that someone else is in a position to reach out to Tom and support him on his journey of self discovery.
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