Wednesday 29th October, 2003 – Being Nude at the Gym

Because I am healthy and modern, I’ve taken to going for a brisk walk every lunchtime; what would have been known, in more innocent times, as a constitutional. Some would quibble with the notion that doing this makes me modern. They may claim that it makes me old-fashioned, even boring. But they would be wrong. It makes me very modern indeed. Even more modern than a fin-headed Hoxtonite listening to electroclash on an I-Pod, with a meat pie in his breast pocket.

Why? Because, according to this article in yesterday’s Guardian, going to the gym is useless, and the only way to stay fit is to lead an ‘active lifestyle’. Well, it doesn’t say that exactly, but it does say that going to the gym is only advantageous if done regularly and indefinitely. Given that only a small percentage of the population have the willpower to make this ridiculous dream a reality, most people end up going to the gym once in a blue moon, thinking that 45 minutes of vigorous exercise a fortnight can somehow reverse the effects of an otherwise sedentary, greedy-mouthed lifestyle. Thus, you are better off making an effort to walk places you might otherwise have driven, to walk up stairs instead of taking lifts or escalators etc., and resisting the urge to ‘reward’ yourself for minor physical exertions by slumping on the settee and spending the rest of the evening cramming cream cakes into your insatiable maw.

That suits me down to the ground, as I’ve never enjoyed the gym. Its not just the necessary proximity to enormous, muscle-bound, red-faced, panting men that attracts me…..repels me, I mean repels me (given that I didn’t mean to write ‘attracts’, and it was clearly a non-Freudian typing error, I should really go back and correct my mistake. Bah! It would take too long. But, ironically, in the time it has taken me to have this dialogue with myself, I could have deleted and re-written it five or six times over. Even more ironically, my acknowledgement of the time I have wasted is itself a further waste of time. As was that. And so on. And so on. And so on….)

Anyway, it is not just the proximity to the muscle-bound oafs etc. that makes me hate the gym; it is not even the way they strut around, tutting and regarding you jealously should you dare to use a piece of equipment they have their eye on, or break one of the many hundreds of conventions of gym etiquette. It’s the way that certain male gym-users seem to regard the gym, less as an opportunity to get fit, more as an opportunity to get naked around other men.

This doesn’t happen in the gym itself, of course. The idea of naked, sweaty bits dangling and dripping anywhere near their fastidiously cleansed exercise surfaces would send the true gym-o-holic into paroxysms of obsessive-compulsive anxiety. No, the celebratory nudity takes place in the changing rooms, where certain men seem to luxuriate in their state of public undress, and remain defiantly naked for as long as is humanly possible, blithely chatting away as their cock and balls sway gently in the air-conditioned breeze.

I am no prude, but I am still always fazed by a complete stranger engaging me in conversation while naked from the waist down. Yet on more than one occasion while I was a regular-ish gym person, just this has happened to me. What baffled me was how different their dressing regimen was to mine. To me, common-sense dictates that you dress from the centre outwards. Thus, pants always go on first, followed by top or trousers (either is fine), and finally by peripherals such as socks, shoes, ties, glasses, hats, etc.

And yet, a proportion of men seem hell-bent on perverting the natural order of things, apparently revelling in the changing room’s laissez-faire attitude toward public nakedness, and perverting it for their own sick and twisted ends. They will first strip completely naked, and spend many minutes swaggering around the room, airing and talcing themselves, their towel obstinately deployed around the neck, rather than the waist.

When, finally, they can put off getting dressed no longer, they slowly clothe themselves from the outside in. Shirts, socks, ties will go on; hair will be combed; teeth will be checked; deodorant applied, until finally, begrudgingly, the nudeophile pulls on his pants, and calls time on his penis’ moment in the sun.

Frankly, I find this kind of behaviour disgusting. And before you try to second guess me, and claim that my disgust at the wanton flaunting of bare male flesh is some kind of sublimated homo-erotic impulse, I direct you to my previous comment. And I quote: “I am not a prude”. With my non-prudishness thus proven, the idea that my sense of disgust is anything more or less than a quite natural desire not to be subjected to the sight of complete strangers’ penises (rather than a deeply hidden desire to be very close indeed to complete strangers’ penises – a desire that causes me mental anguish, and which manifests itself as unreasonable hatred toward an kind of male nudity whatsoever) can rightly be blown out of the water.

And with that point well and truly proven, we can now all get on with our days.