Oh Snap! Shower Boner

Portland | Tyler Benson

Group shower arrangements have gotten quite a hilarious representation in today’s entertainment media. That pack of zany, sex crazed boys in Porky’s films enjoyed a little peek-see as the girl’s of gym class were busy with some upkeep on their tender bosoms and finely feathered bushes; all to the dismay of an ornery, androgynous gym teacher. In the straight to Cinemax after your parents went to bed movie, Cellblock Sisters, the director went so far as to allow these incarcerated vixens ample touching upon each other’s breasts; giving their prison mates such a soap filled scrub that you could eat even the stickiest of honeys off their squeaky clean lady lumps. Carrie had it’s time in the stall, with Carrie coming of age and having her period all over the place. Luckily, the popular girls helped her out with a few tampons, which they conveniently threw at her eyes just in case she happened to be more a visual learner. Half Baked had a thrilling shower scene in which cop killer Kenny dropped the soap and would have had his “virgin butthole” deflowered if it weren’t for a gentlemanly persuasion towards otherwise from one Squirrel Master.

Did you notice the tonal changes from women taking group showers to men taking group showers? Girls taking showers is all puffy and touchy and peep-tastic. Boys taking showers is all bend over and spittle lube and squirrel masters. Each is given an outlook of humor, but as great philosophers will tell you “Humor is bred from tragedy”. I have a feeling that many of these script’s writers were brought into a familiar situation such as myself. I have a feeling that I was hardly the first person to mentally scream in silence: “Oh Snap!…Did the guy staring at me from inside the communal shower just achieve a monster erection?”

First off, let’s smack the 4th grade out of your mouths. “What were you doing looking?” shouldn’t even be acknowledged let alone responded to, but…if you must know…the guy wasn’t necessarily an Irishman, if you know what I’m saying. The southern hemisphere’s forecast warned of a flood 9-inches or greater, if you catch my drift. Basically, the thing draped more ludicrously than the pink elephant in the middle of the room’s trunk.

It was the 24 Hour Fitness located in the Pearl District. I’m a near everyday patron, as I have inferred in my last “Oh Snap!…” that a body like mine isn’t just born, ladies and gentlemen…it is manufactured. It was Saturday night, my workout finished late and to a near barren gym; it was time for a quick shower before off to an engagement. Soap Soap, scrub scrub, dry dry and we’re done here. It was the second scrub in the “scrub, scrub” where things started to differ from Johnny Every-other-shower-here-at-the-24-Hour. I noticed, upon making a quick revolution in order to wash excess soap residue from my back, that a gentleman occupying the stall directly across from me was pointing front forward towards my direction in blatant disregard for community shower rule #1 which clearly dictates “nozzle is to be facing nozzle”.

I walked back over to my locker, patted myself dry and slipped on some pants. As I am beginning to slide my foot into an ankle length sock, I glance my head upwards only to have my eyes met with the burning-hole stares of this same gentleman from the shower. He was positioned just outside his original stall, 20 ft. away, drying his rump by holding opposite corners of a towel and wiggling his body back and forth in Pee Wee’s Playhouse vibrating belt exercise machine gyrations. It was an immediate unlocking of eye contact on my part that brought me to mentally reason out the situation with near Stockholm Syndrome rationale. “The man had clearly brought his very own towel drying rack with him to the gym for damp clothing…he just decided to bring it with him into the shower…and wear it on his person…on his pelvis…right above his balls…and wobble it back and forth right at me.”

The thing is that I realize by attending 24 Hour, I am the minority. People refer to this 24 Hour Fitness in particular as 24 Hour Gay-ness (which is the result of not letting gay culture in on a joke thus forcing straight people to think of “clever puns”.) If you are going into the shower at 24 Hour you will most likely get a look or two in the same innocent manner that I routinely ogle one Romanian looking woman, with her Angelina Jolie bee-stung lips and squeezed out of the sports bra double-D breasts, as she’s is doing her back exercises.

It’s not the gay position of staring me down with a hulking chubby that I have a problem with. I love the gays. Some of my favorite friends are gay. Nothing brings a bigger smile to my face than hanging out with a group of drunk, self ordained “fairies” when they start playfully snipping at each other with a pretentious, “You are being such a faggot”. The part that I have a problem with is the coyness in the act of flashing itself. Why can’t we be more verbally inquisitive? We are an evolved species. We can communicate our desires, not just flap our fiddle faddle about to an unsuspecting audience.

From a sociological stand point, I’m beginning to see this as less of a “gay man in shower interested in stone cold fox slipping on socks” interaction and am leaning more towards a racial undertone stance. Mind you, not the “black people get the mail like, ‘Bill, bill, bill…ah fuck it…let’s go buy expensive Nike shit’ and white people get the mail like, ‘Bill, bill, bill…ah fiddlesticks… (shotgun blast to the head)”, but I’m not sure if there has been another vehicle of observationally humorous race comparison created yet; nor has there been a funnier scenario of race comparison than the example I created above.

I would like to see a country wide gathering of police reports on thrill seeking flashers and their races. If I could take a legit stab at the percentage, I would say that 70% are white folk. Why white? Because we repress all of our desires until they ooze out of us in menacing ways. Black men lay it out there. “Hey, I like the way your ass shakes. Would you like to dance?”, and from there the asked could either be flattered or disgusted. In a worse case scenario one would say a black gentleman harkener is aggressive or direct, but never referred to with the same adjectives that a white club patron is; which usually consists of creepy and sleazy. The white man is the poster child for Peeping Toms everywhere, with their beady little eyes and those itty-bitty, menacing hands that don’t know what to do with themselves. The white man may be considered a privileged majority, but perhaps up front we are representing with a bit too much self awareness and paying for it on the backend by becoming the usual suspects on Law & Order: SVU.

To summarize, white people are the only race making snuff films. Christ, of course I’m guilty…I’m too bashful to even ask a woman to assume the doggy style position. However, on life’s tally counter thus far, I only see one mark next to “whitey” when pertaining to “people that have flashed an erect penis my way”. Gay or straight, Caucasia has got to step it up inquisitively or else we’re going to continue being that night stand gold fish with the degenerate gaze who touches himself while watching you sleep.