Locker room etiquette

If they're comfortable with you, just treat them the same as you would anyone else in the locker room

 

everyone peaks every now and then, even straight guys.

 

I'm not sure that there is one consistent approach that straight guys use. It varies guy to guy, and possibly even varies from time to time, and locker room to locker room. So it's probably something that has to be determined from time to time.

As far as peeking, well, I check other guys out in the pool locker room. If he's nude in the shower, or out in the open, I figure he's fair game. Likewise, I usually shower nude, and I'm well aware that other guys see how I'm equipped.

As OnTheHighway pointed out, peeking is something even straight guys do. For that matter, in a locker room where guys are nude, it would be hard if not impossible to not see other guys' penises out of the corner of your eye.

 

Act as if you were dressed and having a conversation, find your own comfort level with the situation. If he is standing there naked facing you, he is obviously comfortable with his body and showing you his goods. - J

 

Enjoy. BUT. Be very cautious. Consider any locker room a PUBLIC place. Be EXTREMELY cautious in a locker room at work. Even the perception of harassment could have very serious consequences. Just do your business, wash up and move on. If you want to chat do it at the water cooler. When you're both dressed.

 

While I've never had full-frontal from a coworker, I did once have a coworker who had absolutely no problem with walking around without his shirt on in a changing room with other people around. And when it was just me around, I had to do everything I could to not look in his general direction for fear that he'd notice that, yes, he'd literally taken my breath away. While he was definitely comfortable with his body (and who could blame him?), a locker room isn't a place for gawking. Most people would probably prefer to have more private changing areas.

 

It's a generational thing: guys my age, gay and straight, are for the most part totally comfortable walking around a changing room naked and showering together. We've been doing it since grade school. Younger guys, say 35 and below, seem to have more of a problem with it. And really young guys, say 18 to 20, have apparently never seen another guy naked and go to great lengths to avoid being seen themselves. It's always amusing at the start of another school year when the freshmen hit the showers for the first time: some of them cup their genitals in one hand while soaping up with the other; others hide behind the farthest shower stanchion; still others actually shower in their underwear. It usually takes until about November for the awkwardness to subside.

Ironically, there's very little overt sexual interest exhibited in the locker room I frequent (the showers are open with several dozen stanchions and maybe a hundred shower heads in all). Judging by what I read on Craig's List, however, it seems that the private clubs, which have all incurred considerable expense to provide individual shower stalls, are hotbeds of sexual activity, given that there's far more places to get it on discreetly.

 

I'm not saying you'd do this..... just a story. There's a guy I know at my gym that will basically parade around and try to "flaunt" himself by posing in suggestive ways and stuff (not that there is anything to flaunt, the guy is like 70!) People generally seem uncomfortable with this, but he does it anyways. There a time when he was standing next to this guy sitting down putting his shoes on. Only he was standing right next to him, completely naked with his dick extremely close to this random stranger's face. Not only that, but he was actually leaning back! He literally was just standing there having ordinary conversation with this stranger........ while he was basically standing there with his dick right in front of his face and leaning back! It was really funny, the way the other guy was just sitting there chatting with him like normal though. This guy said absolutely nothing while he was just chatting away with him as if there was nothing unusual. In addition to just finding the whole thing kind of funny in a strange way, I'll say that even though I'm obviously not straight (otherwise I wouldn't be here ), it just made me a little uneasy. Like if I'm just having normal, ordinary conversation with someone I hardly know....... I don't want said person I don't really know parading their penis in front of my face.

Maybe you guys are gonna say I'm being judgmental or something, but seriously if I'm just talking to someone in a public setting and having ordinary conversations......... I don't want them just randomly doing uninvited, suggestive things like that. It honestly makes me uncomfortable, even though I've actually been into a fair number of guys myself over the years. So, yeah obviously don't do stuff like this guy did. Also, just have normal conversation if it's appropriate...... and obviously don't look at anyone in any "private" areas or anything along those lines.

 

I've noticed the generational thing as well.

Around 2000, I went lap swimming one day at a college pool. I left at the same time as some sports team that had gone lap swimming as well. We were all nude in the showers, and I could somehow sense the huge discomfort of the guys on the team. I also remember it was dead quiet. It seemed odd to me, since these guys knew each other. They might well be headed next to dinner together or out to get a pizza, at which time they'd presumably have no trouble talking. Although I've never been on a sports team, so I have no idea what might or might not be "normal" in the showers. All I can say is that I've talked with guys I've known after swimming in the showers, even if we are both nude at the time.

Although discomfort with nudity is nothing new. Showering nude was something I wouldn't have been caught dead doing when I was a teenager, even though technically one was supposed to shower after PE, starting in 7th grade. I was the only one to weasel his way out--and make it stick all two years of jr. high PE--but I did get the feeling that many other boys disliked the idea of showering nude in public. But one supposes they got used to it in time. Indeed, I remember one boy. Not so much details--this is 30+ years ago now. He was well developed for his age, and his penis looked better aesthetically than mine. (Yes. I peeked. Not something I'm proud of now, given that I'd have died before letting other boys see my penis.) But he was clearly uncomfortable with the shower experience, which puzzled me. I think I thought: If I had his body, I wouldn't be bothered. (Interestingly, I wrote my interest in guys off for many years because I thought it was just envying their better bodies.) And then suddenly one day this other boy wasn't bothered with showering. I even vaguely recall seeing him dawdling in the shower one day, talking with a 9th grade boy who was the TA for our class.

 

Past showering since grade school, other things were different once upon a time. Today's young man has likely seen quite a bit of porn, which can set unrealistic expectations of what a normal penis looks like. And it probably doesn't help that "nude" and "sex" are so closely connected in many people's minds.

I remember reading early Hardy Boys books when I was young in which the Hardys and their friends apparently go skinny dipping. (My Inner Gay boy might have been quite interested in that scene. :lol: But I can't recall for sure.) IIRC, there is even a scene when Chet Morton plays a prank on the other boys by tying their clothes into knots or something. But as much as my Inner Gay Boy might have been interested in thought of the Hardy Boys nude, it was probably no big deal when the books first came out in the late 1920s. Many boys back then probably had gone swimming with friends in a lake, and wore nothing but their birthday suits.

Because of the whole sex/nudity thing, I've thought that perhaps the best thing would be if group showers were started at an earlier age before sexuality becomes such a big deal. I think the advent of puberty would still bring problems, but if a boy is used to the idea of showering, it'd probably be easier to adapt. It also might help if there could be some honest dialog that genitals vary, particularly in teenage years, and that's OK. Some talk about unexpected erections (one fear I had at the age) might also be nice. But honest dialog doesn't seem too likely to happen in our society that simultaneously stigmatizes and overly sexualizes nudity and our genitals.

 

Going by the age in your profile on the left, you were in school easily in an era when shower requirements had gone down the drain. (Ha!) I've seen articles talking about the decline of showers, and the earliest ran in the 1990s IIRC. Certainly by the time I started swimming (late 90s), the local school district had long since abandoned any shower requirement. But, of course, this varies district to district--one near me still has a requirement, although I've no idea how aggressively they push it.

And showering doesn't guarantee anything. I'm sure many boys would just rinse off just long enough to say they'd showered. Indeed, while I weaseled my way out of group showers, I was forced to be in the locker room, and noted how many boys did as little as possible. My most vivid memory of the showers in use, in fact, were the boys standing there, facing the wall (the showers lined the walls), and moving about as much as a statue. With that approach, the chest gets rinsed. But under arms might stay as sweaty as ever. I saw few boys rinse their backs off. And I'd bet, even facing the wall, that even boys who did soap up a bit probably never touched his genitals.

Of course, this was one locker room, and 7th/8th grade. Maybe things changed as time went by.

---------- Post added 7th Jan 2016 at 06:36 PM ----------

And that was one of the things I thought about through high school. What would [name of guy] look like in the gym showers?"

If by "excitement" you mean erections, yes, that's a real worry. Indeed, that was probably one reason I'd have died before showering in 7th grade. I had lots and lots of unwanted erections the months before 7th grade started. (Worse: I didn't understand it, and even wondered if there was something wrong that made my penis suddenly go stiff all the time!)

Today, I honestly wonder what would have happened if I'd showered with the other boys. Would it have been a huge boner every day? If so, what sort of abuse would I have gotten? Or would the stress of the situation have kept me properly limp?

Erections can also be a worry or issue for straight guys. I never saw anyone with a boner in that locker room, although I suppose that if one hit the reaction would be to do everything possible to hide it. Not that that would have been easy. A boy in the shower area might have been OK since every other boy was looking straight forward. But what if the boner lingered longer than he could stay in the shower? He'd have to walk at least several yards, frontal nudity visible from the locker room, before he could get a towel to cover up.