Post 472 - Changing Rooms

I don't know if it's that A) I get myself into ridiculous / uncomfortable situations more often than most people; B) My propensity to share every single funny thing that happens to me on Blogger, Facebook and Twitter makes it appear that I get myself into ridiculous / uncomfortable situations more often than most people; or C) My ability to embellish mundane everyday events in a fashion which makes them sound more interesting than they really were makes it appear that I get myself into ridiculous / uncomfortable situations more often than most people; but upon sharing this little tale on Facebook yesterday, my own sister commented "Hahaha, why do these things only happen to you?". To me anyway, the crap that I choose to share with a largely uninterested world from my largely uninteresting life is probably mundane; routine; humdrum; but I think I have something of a knack for making my "boring life in a boring town" (that tagline came from a Less Than Jake song by the way) seem more interesting than it actually is. I've been detailing it for 8 years, and people are still reading this blog pretty regularly, so I must be doing something right.

Anyway, since we last spoke I've done something I've never done before - joined a gym. I caught sight of my moobs / love handles combo in a photograph a couple of weeks ago and seeing myself from this different angle was an eye-opener. I thought I carried my extra pounds quite well, but staring back at me from the photo was an out-of-shape, slovenly sack of crap and the realisation that this is how other people see me shook me into a reaction. I had also recently come across an old blog entry from November 2005 which read "I got a shock this week when I caught sight of myself getting changed in the mirror and realised I could actually count every one of my ribs (ever seen The Machinist with Christian Bale? That's me), and standing on the bathroom scales, discovered I have dropped below 9stone for the first time since I was at school." Admittedly, I was unhealthily thin back then, but since I'm now tipping the scales at over 11 stone, I've let it get too far in the other direction and I decided action was required.

So for the past two weeks I've spent my evenings cycling, running, rowing and lifting in an attempt to fight the flab and get that super-cool "malnourished" look I had in 2005. (Incidentally, the exercise bike is a great way of taking out sexual frustration - just don't expect it to cuddle you afterwards) So far, the effects have been minimal (except for giving me an ass like fucking granite!) but if I can stick this out for a while instead of quickly losing interest, like I do with every other thing I ever pick up, ever, then hopefully sexy old Uncle Elwood will be making a return just in time to start piling it all back on again over the winter.

So anyway, it's taken me a long time to get to the point of this entry. Last night, after a very strenuous cardio workout, I retired back to the gym changing room to grab my bag and head home (I don't shower at the gym - my house is only 5 minutes away so I do it there). Gym changing rooms are a place I'm never entirely comfortable in, and I'm not sure why. I'm by no means prudish, I have no qualms at all about anyone seeing me naked - after all, it's only a body and we all have the same parts - and using the same reckoning, I'm equally unoffended by the sight of another man's penis. I've seen penises before and nothing bad ever happened from it, so I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that I'm OK with penises. Not OK to the point that I'd like to jump on one and suck it, but comfortable enough that I can get changed in the vicinity of one without having a nervous breakdown. So I'm not sure what my issue is with changing rooms, but I think it may be with the showers. The shower block in most men's changing rooms it simply a square room with a number of  showerheads sticking out of the wall - no partitions or anything. A shower, to me, is quite an intimate, private moment, and I don't really want to be washing my balls in the company of 8 completely naked total strangers. Anyway, I've got sidetracked again. When I entered the changing room yesterday I found it totally deserted, which was pleasing. After retrieving my bag from my locker I walked down to the end of the changing rooms to go for a piss (there is a toilet there, I wasn't just pissing in the corner) and sort of dilly-dallied a bit while I was in there, gave my face a quick splash, washed out my drinks bottle etc. and upon exiting the toilet, found that the all-male kickboxing class which had been going on in the large hall had now descended upon the changing rooms and were eagerly stripping off to hit the showers. Now, I was at one end of a very narrow changing room, the exit door was at the other end, and both sides of the changing room were flanked by about 16 sweaty naked men. Which is how I found myself squeezing, excuse-meing and picking my way through a throng of guys who were either entirely disrobed, or in the process of disrobing. Everywhere I looked - cocks. Big cocks, little cocks, white cocks, brown cocks. And Jesus guys, would it kill you to do a bit of manscaping? Its 2011, it's not the done thing any more to have your junk look like three tiny pink eggs poking out of a blackbird's nest. I said before I'm not uncomfortable with the sight of another man's cock, but that was just too fucking many cocks. You ever see that gameshow "Hole In The Wall" with Dale Winton, where the competitors are standing at the edge of a pool and there's a wall coming towards them with a funny shape cut in it? They have to contort themselves into that funny shape to fit through the hole in the wall, or they'll be knocked backwards into the pool. Well that was kinda the situation I was in, expect instead of a wall it was A BUNCH OF HAIRY COCKS, and instead of a pool, it was A BUNCH OF HAIRY COCKS. You'd never see that on primetime BBC1 (well, maybe on the Graham Norton show).

And so we get back to the beginning of this entry. To most people, this would be a two sentence story. "I went for a piss in the bogs at the back of the changing rooms, when I came out there was naked guys everywhere. Nae fine!". In my hands however it becomes a thousand word opus about the day I "ran a gauntlet of cocks". I think the answer is "C" Chris. I don't need a 50/50, and no need to ask the audience. They've probably all fallen asleep with the time it's taken me to tell this story.

Song currently stuck in my head - "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush
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