When I was growing up, I did not use the downstairs bathroom. Ever. That was the guest bathroom, and it was only for guests.

Those of you who follow this blog, or have been following it for awhile, know that I have done a series revolving around the people you would meet in the old UMASS men's locker room (they now have a new facility which I never use because there is no pool in the new building).  And one of the most intriguing characters from this series is the guy who hangs his nasty ass bathing suit on the outside of his locker.  Here was my last post on the subject.  If you search "locker" on the blog, you can read them all.  Long story short, in a form of experimental psychological conditioning, I began tying knots in the strings of this guys bathing suit as a type of silent protest.   The knots became plentiful, but, someone amazingly, the bathing was not moved inside the safety of his locker.

then there was a shift.  somewhere along the line i met this guy, and he turns out to be incredibly nice.  Also, bad things started happening to me . . . like . . . back surgery-- keeping me from the pool.

I am not an extremely superstitious man, but I figure there may be a grain of truth in almost anything.  And something about the connection between my sabotage of a nice person's bathing trunks (no matter how gross their display) and my own physical disintegration, gave me pause.  It paused me right into a head on collision with believing in karma.  At least I began to see the connection, and believe in the concept enough to stop.  But more straightforwardly, I stopped f'ing with this guys shit because i felt the negativity was being reflected back onto my own life.  yes, i can make even karma narcissistic.

So, you can imagine how self-important and righteously correct i felt when, upon opening my adjacent locker, I glanced over to see this:

is that a burr on your bathing suit, or are you just happy to see me!

Aaron Burr

Now, with no judgement, i can tell you that i would not have done this.  It's not that i have any line of appropriateness (full stop) regarding the use of woodland accessories in pranking someone's swim paraphernalia.

Rather, I think it would just be way too much work to transport that thing all the way to the gym.  And, i mean, making someone untie knots is funny to me and annoying to the person.   A burr in your testicles is  . . . well. . . that's actually much much funnier to me, but could cause actual pain to the subject.  I'm more subtle.

BUT, as I saw this beautiful burr-filled sight before me, I must admit that I flashed back once again to our ol' friend karma.  I stopped harassing this man's bad manners, feeling that his debt to me, personally, had been paid.  And, as i found peace and centering on this subject, that tranquility came around and sent a new plague down upon that putrid rag of clothing.  If you're going to believe in karma, even a little, i feel it best to remember that it works both ways.  Don't keep yourself down by muting your behavior so as not to cause retribution.  Remember, your inner peace should also bring hellfire and devastation down upon your enemies.

At least I'm pretty sure thats how it works.

Some of you may remember a series on did on the blog called "The Five People You Meet When You Go into the Men's Locker Room."  If you haven't read them, you can find them over on the right in the archives.  Long story short, swimming is (one) of my exercises of choice, and the things i encounter in and around the pool area are constant blog fodder.  So, instead of resisting the urge, I'm going to continue to fill you in on recent happenings in the gym.

So, one thing that has really started to piss me off is this guy.  He still leaves his gross ass bathing suit hanging there on the outside of the locker.  And i'm over this craziness.  I spent a lot of time trying to find a solution that A) didn't directly implicate me  B) wasn't overly harsh (i mean, he's not poisoning children after all) C) gets my point across.  Here's what I have come up with:

One of my least favorite things to do is take knots out of shoes, pant strings, etc.  I decided that i would bite the bullet and touch this gross thing, in order to be the change i want to see in the world.  A few days ago, after my swim, i pulled a nice tight knot into one of his draw strings.  The next day, I pulled one into the other string.  Today (I hadn't swum since last Wednesday), I pulled a third knot in.  I am a Social Psychologist after all, and the opportunity for me to have a little fun with this seemed necessary.  Here are the rules as i see them (and they are admittedly loose and subject to immediate change.)

1. Only one knot per visit.  So if he keeps pullin' em out, i'll just keep puttin em in.  But gradually.
2. I don't pull knots on top of other knots (to make a sorta mega-knot)--all knots get their own space on the wire.

And that's about it.  I'm actually pretty interested in how long this continues on for.  I mean, from his perspective, do you really start thinking someone is tying knots in your bathing suit?  Or i guess, more accurately, the question is, WHEN does one start thinking that someone is tying knots in their bathing suit.  We will all get to find out together!  Current knot count:  3.


stay tuned for more locker room fun coming soon. . .

I'm am not a happy camper.  It 9pm and I'm in my lab running my experiment and it's going to be awhile.  So, let's blog.  I know it has been awhile since Part III of my locker room series, and I can only hope this makes it worth the wait.
#4. The Pink Briefed Panther.

The Pink Briefed Panther (PBP) is most certainly the most tragic of our locker room characters.  He is almost tragic enough to make me feel slightly uncomfortable about blogging about his existence, but he happened to be back in the locker room today (after a lengthy absence) and he was once again up to his old shenanigans.  And so my uncomfortability flew right out the window.

The PBP bares an uncanny physical resemblance to the character Artie ("the kid in the wheelchair") on the t.v. show gLee".  Considering the actor who plays Artie is not, himself, paraplegic, there is a small chance it's actually the same kid.  But i doubt it.

Most of the other locker room characters all have one thing in common.  They have a locker.  Or, at the very least, they have a space where they change.  The PBP does not.  He's a lurker.  He always "changes clothes" (i have never seen him actually fully change) near, but not next to, others in the locker room.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me start by telling my first "experience" with the PBP.

Post swimming, I take a shower in the large two-room shower area which is between the pool and the locker area (no picture this time).  As I am showering the PBP walks by the shower, walking like a true panther in the wild, he looks in at me and continues on by.  I think nothing of this.  Then he walks back the way he came, looks in, and continues past.   Still no blip on my radar.  This is what happens every time someone goes to the bathroom (which is just past the showers).  Then, he walks back again.  Hmmm, did he forget something?  And back again.  He must have forgotten something.  And then back again, every time glancing in.  I shit you not, the first time I encountered the PBP he repeated this procedure 5 times.  That's ten passes.  That is friggin weird.  That's boarding on . . . no . . . not bordering on . . . that's creepy.

And I need to take a minute to clarify something.  I am not homophobic.  I know to say it that directly seems defensive, but I need to make this clear.  I am as flattered (perhaps more) when a guy hits on me as I am when a woman does.  I think discrimination based on sexual orientation will eventually come to be seen as as offensive as discrimination based on color (because it is).  I am in no way grossed out by anything homosexual, may it be the sex acts of 2 women or 2 men.  Frankly, I don't give a damn what people do on their own time.  Screw a pineapple, sofa cushion, or lard in a Tupperware (where do i get these things), I really don't care.   If you need any more convincing, i was a dance major in college, enough said.

To even further make this clarification i will give an example not of the PBP, but another locker room patron, similarly invading my idea of common courtesy and etiquette in the locker room.  In a double shower room with 72 shower nozzles, I was showering alone post swim.  A man entered the shower room and proceeded to come and shower directly next to me.  While some nozzles are better than others (pun not intended--i'm talking water pressure here), the one's next to my shower were not the "good one's."  This makes me uncomfortable in the same way that peeing next to someone when there are free urinals elsewhere is taboo (trust me on this one ladies).  I am not worried that this guy is gay and going to do "something gay" to me (what the hell would that be?).  I just don't need someone (anyone) up in my piece when there is a virtual cornucopia of space to shower in. 

So, as the PBP lurks back and forth for a 10th pass, I am tempted to tell him to "take a picture cause it will last longer."  I don't.  Interestingly, I have never seen the PBP in workout attire.  He changes in an ellaborate process (with much back and forth around the shower), but only once have I seen him even undress to his skivvies.  As per the name, they were pink tighty-whities.  (in full disclosure, I have many pairs of light-blue boxer briefs and I actually thought the underwear itself [minus the inappropriate behavior] were kinda fly]).

The PBP has also been known to camp out at the end of a locker row and study.  Now, you've seen the pictures.  The locker room is NO ONE'S ideal study environment.  It's damp, clammy, and smells like sweat.  It's just an unpleasant place unless you're a fungus looking for a host.  So, to see a kid hanging at the end of the row with his feat up on the bench with his books out is just plain weird.  Then to change in front of him as he looks on. . . it's just a creepy invasion of privacy.

Now, as I began, this kid is obviously grappling with some issues of his own.  And I kinda want to hand him resources of people to talk too, cause he's just too awkward looking to feel actually threatened by.  But that doesn't excuse his behavior, or make it ok.  The locker room is not a spectator sport, and if you aren't changing, showering, or going to the bathroom, you gots to go.

Now I know that at least of few of you have been waiting for this one. And to be honest, so have i. I apologize for the delay but, truth is, this is not (yet) my job. So, until that changes and my brilliance is more globally recognized, i have time constraints. Enough about this. Let's get to our man.


#3. Mr. Confidence

Mr. Confidence is my least favorite person in the locker room.  If this series of articles were like the book the 5 people you meet in heaven, Mr. Confident would be at whichever character symbolized "you" bottoming out.  Put simply, Mr. Confidence walks around the locker room naked.  But that simple fact is not why you should hate him.  Mr. Confidence walks around naked as if the locker room were his home bathroom.  And his bathroom has a lot of mirrors in it.  It is not that there is anything wrong with being naked in the locker room, that's kinda the point in most cases, but most people don't relish this time.  And they certainly don't see it as a chance to showcase themselves.  Mr. Confidence will engage you in conversation, while naked, without making any indication that he is trying to find a way to cover himself.  That's not ok.

But, in order to fully understand why I hate Mr. Confidence, you need some context.  Where i come from (Pittsfield, MA public school system) you do not get naked in a school's shower.  Hell, if you took a shower in my middle or high school (both which had shower rooms), it would be all over the school.  The only time I saw any of those showers used was when I and the other freshman soccer players were soaked down in freezing water with all of our clothes and warm-ups on in the middle of winter (i believe they call this "hazing"). Otherwise, those showers were purely ornamental.

Being that carefree in a locker room indicates to me that this kid and i have some fundamental differences in terms of where we come from--emotionally.  There is no way that any person that went to my high school could be Mr. Confidence.  I don't care if you were popular or not.  Being uncomfortable in that kind of dirty public sweat-filled collection area was more a fact than a variable experience.  If you have ever had some fat gym teacher line you and your friends up (middle school now) in your underwear to check you for scoliosis, you can never be Mr. Confidence.

Pause.  HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN!  I was just recalling this scoliosis test i took in middle school and i literally flashed on all of us lined up in tightie white-ies and bending over, then turning, then bending over again.  How did this happen!?!?  Did parents know about this.  I'm almost positive that our gym teacher at the time was no "spinal specialist."  All im saying is that if some gym teacher did want to see all the little boys or girls in their underwear, this would be how they would do it.  And it happened.  I'm kind of grossed out right now.  Bletch.

Unpause.  You see how powerful these memories are.  I am not uncomfortable about nudity (i can actually hear a few of you chuckling at me writing that), but if you see a UMass dingy locker room as any sort of runway or social get together -- i hate you.  Again, its not making friends in a locker room that i don't like--that's fine-- it's equating that dungeon with any sort of bar scene/social mixer, which i despise.

Mr. Confidence doesn't tip well.  Mr. Confidence has a blue-tooth device he uses in public, probably when ordering.  Mr. Confidence doesn't feel he needs to look both ways before crossing the street.  In short, one of these days I'm gonna soap down the tiles before Mr. Confidence showers.  Maybe it'll knock some sense into him.


Next up: The Pink Briefed Panther.

We now continue our journey into the secret world of public locker rooms.  Ladies, you should know that this brief look "behind the curtain" should be enough to keep you from actually ever entering one of these places.  I know this seems obvious, but not too long ago, one of the people i met just after re-pantsing was a young lady, totally lost, totally not great at English, looking for the gym.  Again, she had somehow wandered smack dab into the middle of the men's locker room while looking for the gym.  This situation could have been much much MUCH MUCH worse.  I'm talking massive amounts of old guy ball sac worse.  She was very lucky.  Her childhood remained in tack.  I escorted her out.  I'm a hero.

Chief Stands-on-Bench

Now one of the reason for the delay between posts (besides the fucking police), was that I really felt that in order to get the full "Chief" experience you should have more of a picture of the locker room.  So, for you my faithful readers, I took my 2nd and 3rd locker room photos.  I swear if grad school doesn't work out maybe i can parlay this into a career in porn stills.  I digress.  Here are some shots of the men's locker room at UMass:

As you can see, its pretty WWII Poland grey.  Add a nice dampness and fungal feeling and its almost like you yourself are there. Which brings us to Chief Stands-on-Bench (CSOB).  As the name implies, CSOB likes to stand on the damp wooden bench pictured, between the opposing locker faces.   Oh, and he's completely naked.  This is a 50-60 yr-old man we are talking about.  Totally friggin nude.  Nudy-tune.  He'd be nude-zilla if Mr. Confidence (coming up next), didn't exist. These are old balls.

Most important to understanding what a nude man standing on a bench in the middle of a bunch of lockers "means,' is to picture where that leaves "his junk."  His bait and tackle.  His penis and balls.

The answer to that most important of questions is, "At eye level."  Now, say your locker is remotely close to his locker.  Say, 5 lockers down.  That means you, quite literally, have to keep a heads up to assure you don't "knock heads."

I'm sorry, but this doesn't seem like appropriate locker room etiquette, and being the psychologist i am, i have tried to come up with potential reasons that CSOB stands on the bench.

Here's some potential reasons.  One.  He thinks its easier to access his "top locker."  If this is the reason than i wish him small pox (it is worth mentioning that CSOB is not, to the best of my knowledge and observation, remotely Native American).   I realize that there are no people in the reference pictures (for good reason) but the top locker starts around my belly-button.  Come friggin on.

Reason 2.  He's worried about the cleanliness of the floor.  On its face, this seems like a reasonable explanation, but here's why it's not.  First of all, he doesn't wear shower shoes, so he can't be OCD or super worried about his own hygiene as it relates to touching things in the gym.  Second, the bench is totally totally totally gross.  The bench is an ass cushion for most.  A bare ass cushion.  Standing on that thing is arguably grosser (hygiene-wise) than the floor.  I have seen things on those benches that would necessitate me blocking underage users from seeing my blog in order to recount.  DON'T LICK THE BENCH!

So there is no good reason for putting your pee-pee on that kind of display.  And, in the interest of satisfying your curiosity, its nothing to be put on display.  This is not a candidate for the penis hall of fame.  I'm not one to usually talk about other men's stuff, especially negatively, but like they say, if you put it all up in my face im gonna put it all up on the internets.  Ok,  only i say that.  But i think it goes without saying.

Last thing about CSOB.  He has been "friendly" enough in the past to engage me in a totally unsolicited conversation about pool etiquette (put on your boots, the irony is about to run thick).  He complained that people don't know how to stay on their side of the lane (when splitting the lane) and they always end up hitting or kicking him.  Now, as someone who has experienced this, i will admit that this does suck.  It breaks your rhythm and can hurt if you aren't expecting it.  That said, a few days later i saw CSOB in the pool in a lane all by himself.  His crawl stroke looked like an epileptic being tasered.  I laughed out loud.  This guy needs more mirrors in his life.  When i lived in Brooklyn, my housemates and i printed stickers that said, "But maybe your the asshole."  They brilliantly were meant to make people look at themselves before cursing out everyone else in their surroundings.  We made those stickers for CSOB.

Next time on "the 5 people you meet"  Mr. Confidence.

as a teaser trailer i will tell you that i hate mr. confidence the MOST!!!

This is going to be a multi-parter folks.  I'm telling you straight up front.  Don't act all surprised when the "to be continued. . . " gets thrown up there.  Ok. Disclaimer done.

I spend a lot of  time at the UMass pool.  And, conveniently, there is an old locker room attached to the pool.  I should add that the new gym complex just openned, but doesn't have a pool.  What this says to me is that an old gym locker room from the 80's which is already filthy gross is now going to get forgotten about (due to only being used by swimmers) and get super dirty filthy gross.  Anyways.  This is all the setup for what I am calling "The 5 People You Meet if you Spent Time in the Men's Pool Locker Room."

Number 1:  Ol' Man Whistler

Ol' Man Whistler (OMW) is almost always around . . . somewhere.  He's a lifer in these parts and the locker room is more like his home bathroom than a public area.  But, OMW's most prominent feature is his ability to constantly whistle the first 3/4th of a line of a song, that you are just about to recognize, when he switches to the first 3/4ths of the next song.  It's vocal ADD really.  But when you echo your song fragments across a gym locker room, it is the mouth music equivalent of chinese water torture.  I have actually run into someone that I met at the pool, and the first thing he talked about was OMW.  And while i find his "tune" incredibly obnoxious, this guy was talking violence.  OMW better watch his back.


Next time on TBRARUMUD . . . #2: Chief Stands on Bench      and      #3:  Mr. Confidence

I honestly thought that today's post was going to be about swimming.  Let me start there.  I was going to title the entry "Swimfan" and make some witty remarks about how, while no one actually stalks me, I have been spending an increasing amount of time underwater--an loving it.  That post will be for another day, however, as I forgot that generally speaking we have very little control over what actually happens to us--as opposed to what we plan.  With that in mind, I left for the gym and came back with a blog entry.  Enjoy.

I have been swimming regularly.  About 4 or 5 times a week.  And my favorite days to swim are actually on the weekend because not many undergrads go to the pool during this time (PARTY!) and the pool is open for 3 and 7 hour blocks, as opposed to the 2 hour window during weekdays.  This said, I got in my car to go to the pool around 2pm.  First stop = Coffee Shop (when i say coffee shop i always am referring to Amherst Coffee--cause its the shiz).  I find a well timed espresso right before exercising gets my juices flowing and makes the time that much more enjoyable.  The place was packed due to UMass Homecoming and my friend Andrew pulled me an epically beautiful shot that hit my system like a bong rip (except in the opposite physiological direction) and I was ready to go.  The gym/psych building parking lot is generally empty on the weekends.  Because it's the weekend and one hopes that most people aren't spending their weekends locked up in academic buildings (i totally do that).  Today, the lot was packed.  This sometimes happens when there are lacrosse/hockey/football games with overflow parking.  It's annoying but seldom, and usually you can still sneak in somewhere.  Considering this is homecoming, I attributed the crowd to the football game and felt lucky to park my Volvo in a rather optimal spot close to the gym.

I proceed into the men's locker room (picture Revenge of the nerds 80's gross locker room) to change and emotionally prepare for my swim.  There are a few UMass swimmers in the shower which isn't unusual as i'm pretty sure that the swim team has an quota of laps they must swim each week and there are always a few of them in the pool zipping back and forth like dolphins.  I change into my suit, quick rinse, and boom --thru the door into the pool room.  I look up to see bleachers full of people, swimmers, and general mass chaos in and around my usually ghost-town like weekend pool swim.  For about 2 seconds I feel as if I am in the movie where the kid is standing in front of the class completely naked (I am wearing nothing but a confused look and my jammers).  After those 2 seconds, I turn around and start drying/getting re-dressed.  There are, for the record, no signs or indicators that there is a swim meet today (perhaps they were up a different day--but not today), and this is pretty indicative of the shitshow which is the current state of affairs at the UMass gym.  You can tell them I said that.

Oh, now it gets good.  So, I'm feeling a little pissy and defeated and I'm not looking forward to letting this caffeine high go to waste.  That is when I realize I am parked in.  Now generally this would put me over the edge.  But this time, it made me smile and laugh.  Here's why:


and then subsequently(sorry for the sidewayedness) Additionally, it should be said that while I don't know how to rotate video as of yet, I did shoot this video from in front of my car to accentuate the parked-in-ed-ness:


and then, just like that, they were gone:


Ok, so this is the first time I have ever been parked in by a marching band so I decided to just go with the experience. But it was crazy nonetheless.

Arriving home unexercised, there was only one thing that could ail my woes. Bacon. So I made myself a bacon omelet with bacon topping, and all was well with my Saturday once again.