Shower Prude

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Young man feels exposed in communal shower.
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I loved gymnastics when I was a kid and specialized in the floor exercise with tumbling and bounding. Competitions for little kids weren't highly competitive where I lived. If someone was headed to the Olympics or something, they probably moved away to work with a dedicated trainer. My trainer was a high school gym coach who moonlighted for extra money.

I dropped out of gymnastics when I was fourteen and hadn't noticeably started puberty yet. Men's gymnastics are all about strength and particularly upper body strength. The other boys grew taller and gained muscle mass while I retained a little boy physique. I might have stayed with it even though I was uncompetitive in most events because I liked the floor routines, but the showers after practice were the final straw. No fourteen year old wants to be different from his peers, and my difference became increasingly humiliating. Nobody was really mean to me except the one guy who spread rumors at school. My own self imposed embarrassment drove me out of the sport.

The puberty fairy eventually found me. By the time I turned nineteen, I had caught up with the other guys. I had difficulty meeting girls in part because I was beneath their notice for so many years. I think teens go through a phase where they start to mingle with the other gender and learn to socialize. I missed that experience. I was shorter than most of the girls and looked years younger than my age until eighteen at least.

I stayed in town to attend the local university. My grandfather had a college fund for me, but I earned an academic scholarship, so I used granddad's money to pay for room and board. I enjoyed the "college experience" as the brochures described it. I had the dorm room closest to the elevators on the floor with the laundry room. Most floors in the building were single gender, e.g. the boys' floors and the girls' floors. Electronic keys only let students into common areas like the lobby and their own floor. Only boys lived on my floor, but the laundry counted as a common area.

I received an email from my old gym teacher/gymnastics coach. She had accepted a position as Assistant Coach of the university's swimming and diving team. She tried to recruit me for the dive team by citing my gymnastics experience. She must have been fairly desperate because she sent me email almost every day until I replied. I agreed to meet her at the indoor pool to discuss possibilities.

Mrs. Rush bought me a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine, invited me into her broom closet sized office, and said, "The competitive dive season starts soon. The men's team is short two, and we're down three women. We'll be at a huge scoring disadvantage if we can't fill every event with the maximum number of students."

I nodded my understanding. I never considered diving competitively. My experience consisted of goofing off at a neighborhood swim club that only had a low diving board. "I don't think I can help you," I said.

"You were one of my best students. I know you'll be an asset to the team. This is my first year, and if we score as poorly as last year, it will probably be my only year. Please, at least try it and see if you like it."

I sighed. "I do miss gymnastics," I said.

"Great. Practice is every morning at six a.m. and every evening from nine to eleven. You are expected to attend seven practices a week using any combination of those times."

"I can't see myself out of bed at six," I said with a laugh.

"I'll see you tonight at nine then." She smiled back at me.

"Wait, when do you sleep? If you're at both practices, you can't be getting more than six hours a night."

"Yeah. It's a hassle, but the dive team doesn't get first choice of pool times. The university rents the facilities to a high school from seven to eight-thirty every night. I had to take what I could get."

~~~~~ ~~~~~

I found the men's locker room by a quarter to nine. The entrance at the end of a hallway opened directly into an area with benches and lockers. Beyond that, a tiled area contained a couple of toilet stalls, urinals, and sinks. Winding my way around a corner, the only route to the pool passed through a communal shower area. It was a big open room with shower heads along three walls. Beyond the shower, the corridor turned ninety degrees and a door opened onto the pool deck.

The pool should have been on the recruiting brochures. There were eight fifty meter lanes and four twenty-five meter lanes. A separate diving pool had two low springboards, a high springboard, and a three tiered Olympic style dive platform. My mouth hung open to see it. Bleachers could seat a thousand spectators, and a glass press box at the top of the bleachers contained at least two large permanently mounted TV cameras.

"I had no idea swimming was such a big deal here," I said in awe when Mrs. Rush greeted me. Then I remembered to close my mouth.

"It used to be back when they built this facility. A bunch of championship plaques line the gallery on the way to the bleachers. The old coach retired a decade ago, and the team fell apart. The league kicked us down into a lower division, and we've been ignored since."

"That's a shame," I said because she seemed to expect a response.

"Where's your suit?" She swept her arm up and down to emphasize the street clothes I wore.

"I don't have one. I didn't expect to go swimming when I came to school."

"You'll have to buy one of the team suits eventually. Our colors are teal zebra stripes on yellow, I'm afraid." She shook her head ruefully.

"The school's colors are red, white, and blue," I said.

"I know, but there was already a team with red, white and blue in the lower division, so we had to settle. Anyway, the decision was made before I got here."

"Should I just watch today?"

"Come with me," she said as she turned me by my elbow and guided me back into the men's locker room. She followed me right in.

"Um," I stammered as I gestured around the empty shower area.

"I'm the coach," she said.

I blushed a little but followed her through to the area with lockers.

"You can pick any locker that doesn't have a combination lock. Bring your own lock."

A couple of guys wore generic speedos in a variety of colors, but most wore ugly teal and yellow speedos. "Hey guys," Mrs. Rush said. "Do any of you have a spare suit Josh can borrow for today's practice?"

A tall guy closed his locker and said he had his competition suit from last year in his bag, but the bag was out in his car.

"Will you get it for me?" Mrs. Rush asked with the "help a poor damsel in distress" body language I remembered from gym class.

The tall guy sighed heavily and opened his locker again. He put on sweatpants and a team jacket while we watched, and then he jogged out the door.

"I'll start practice. When David gets back, put on the suit and join us." Mrs. Rush threw a quick smile at me but let it fade before she had completely turned to leave through the showers.

David handed me the ugly suit, stripped down to his own suit, and walked toward the showers and the pool deck. He didn't say anything intelligible. He just thrust the suit at me and grunted.

I guess speedos are more or less one size fits all. The thing stretched and squeezed my hips. I glanced in the mirror and winced at the outline of my penis pointing up and to the right and noted that one of my balls hung lower that the other. I thought, if the thing were any tighter, people would be able to tell I was circumcised. I felt shy, but the other guys wore similar suits, and I was nineteen. I told myself to grow a pair and get out there. I looked at my pair in the mirror on the way.

Mrs. Rush walked over to me right away. She said, "Do you remember the floor exercise where you bounded into a back flip?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to do that from the low platform. Plant your hands on the textured edge and flip out and away. Get a good distance so you don't hit your head. If your hands don't land on the textured strip, don't attempt the flip. Just let gravity carry you to the water."

I nodded.

"Are you OK?"

"Yes. I just haven't tumbled in a few years."

"It will come back. It's like sex or riding a bicycle."

I took her word about the sex.

I waited in line while another guy performed a front handspring into a three quarter twist and slid into the water like a seal. For my turn, I paced three large steps back from the edge and turned. My chest heaved with anxiety, but I remembered the nerves I always had before competitions.

I took two steps and bounded with a half turn into a handspring. I felt the bumps of the textured strip, so as I launched with my momentum, I crouched into my flip for at most half a turn before smacking my back hard on the water. The slap reverberated throughout the pool area. It stung like hell.

When I climbed out of the pool, my back was lobster red, and I hopped from foot to foot sucking air through my teeth to manage the lingering pain.

Several of the girls practicing on springboards clapped for me. Mrs. Rush shouted, "A little more height next time."

I wanted to quit right then, but my father always said quitting becomes a habit, so I got back in line for another try. My second attempt got the height, but I hit the water feet first while still in my tuck. The boys at the swim club would have called it an epic cannon ball. The pretty lifeguard on duty scowled at me as she wiped remnants of my splash off her legs.

Mrs. Rush asked, "Didn't I say? We're going for the smallest splash, not the biggest."

Several people chuckled. I attempted the relatively easy tumble several more times before Mrs. Rush sent me to practice on some mats layered out on the other side of the pool deck. The mats didn't provide as much room as I used for floor routines, but I enjoyed trying out elements of my old routine. The first thing I realized was that my arms and legs were a lot longer than I remembered. I used to be able to complete four tumbles in the space available, but two sent me out onto the concrete deck. I looked at my limbs as if they betrayed me.

After practice, I jogged to the locker room along with the other guys. Most toweled dry and pulled sweatpants over their wet suits. I didn't have any sweatpants, and David wanted his suit back. I reminded myself that I wasn't a little boy anymore, and I had already grown a pair, so to speak, so I gathered my street clothes on a bench and wriggled out of the impossibly tight suit.

I was bent over at the waist to get the suit over my ankles when I heard Mrs. Rush right behind me. I imagined I could feel her body heat on my bare ass, but I'm sure it was in my head.

"David, can Josh borrow your suit for the rest of the week until he has one of his own?" Mrs. Rush said it in that wheedling way of hers.

"I guess," David replied sounding put-upon. "I needed it as a backup for competitions though," he added as a warning.

"Great," Mrs. Rush said and launched into her after practice summary of what she saw and what she expected from each of us at the next practice.

I remained bent over until I felt ridiculous and then stood. I kept my back to Mrs. Rush while I yanked on my white briefs and then my jeans. I didn't really hear a word she said over the beating of my own pulse in my ears. I probably looked like a boiled lobster again.

"I'm going to go talk to the girls now," she said. "Get your sleep boys." She smiled at all of us and trotted back out through the showers.

~~~~~ ~~~~~

I lived right next to the laundry, so I got in the habit of washing and drying David's suit after each practice. I adopted the sweatpants over wet suit strategy employed by the other guys for the cold walks back to my dorm room. As I got to know the other guys, they joked with me about mooning Mrs. Rush at my first practice. They said it should be a new initiation for everyone who joined the team. I laughed with them, but every time they said something about it, I blushed again.

The two team suits I ordered showed up at the end of the first week. Mrs. Rush had made some comment about having a spare in case of problems. My first thought was to buy a black suit that might conceal my assets a little better, but I worried I wouldn't be able to wear a black suit in competition if something happened to my team suit.

I talked to a few of the girls. It represented a big step forward for me. Shyness dominated my social interactions under the best of circumstances, and the athletic girls in skimpy one piece suits made me extra nervous. One girl, Natalie, gave me pointers on my dives. We spent a whole practice together with her demonstrating things and me mimicking her while she watched from the water by edge of the pool. I'd swim over to the ladder, and she'd climb out right ahead of me. Sometimes our hands touched on the ladder's hand rail. I stared at a sensual stretch of her long neck and the sway of her feminine curves when she hopped onto the deck.

My diving improved over the following weeks, and I enjoyed feeling like part of the team. Some of the other guys came to my dorm room to play video games. I joined an informal dart league with David at a bar off campus. Losers had to buy the winner's drinks, and David and I lost more than we won. I wasn't old enough to buy beer, so every time we lost, the other team grumbled over the Cokes I bought them. We started to win more often, but I suspected the other teams let us.

I enjoyed catching glances from the girls, too. They never did that when I was in high school. There was nothing to see then. I actually told Natalie, "Up here - my eyes are up here," one time. She laughed, and I ogled her boobs for payback.

A few days later, Natalie pulled me aside after a dive and said, "I've been waiting for a good way to say this, but I'm just going to come right out and say it."

"What?" I asked with a worried tone.

"Whatever you're doing with the suits, you better stop it. Haven't you noticed the things are getting threadbare, and the yellow is almost see through now."

I jumped back from her. "What?" I looked down at myself and saw the standard sculpted relief of my penis with curves highlighted by zebra stripes. "I don't see it," I said.

"Um." Natalie blushed a little. "It's, ah, only where the material is stretched the most."

I looked down again with concern.

"Um, your balls," she said.

"Shit. Why didn't you say something sooner? Now I have to finish practice like this."

She laughed. "I've been looking for a week. One more practice isn't going to reveal anything I haven't studied already."

The self-conscious hell I endured for the next ninety minutes left me jittery and nauseous when I got into the locker room. I bent every which way to see in the mirror, and the guys made jokes about my new limbering exercises. I pulled on sweatpants and headed out with a strange emotion bordering on humiliation with overtones of foolishness.

Natalie met me in the hall right outside the men's lockers. The door closed slowly behind me, and it occurred to me that she had a good view from her position. Another shiver passed through me.

"What are you doing to your suits?" she asked.

"I don't know. I wash them after every practice."

"You're not using bleach are you?"

"I don't own any bleach."

"Maybe there's some bleach in whatever detergent you use. You might have just got a bad dye lot from the factory, too. The chlorine in the pool might be causing it."

"Is my other suit as bad?"

"Worse," She winked.

I rubbed my wet hair back over my head and tasted some bile in the back of my mouth. "What am I going to do? These things cost eighty dollars each, and it'll take a week to get new ones."

"Wear both at the same time until the new ones arrive."

"That's a great idea. Thanks." I smiled with genuine relief as I considered the brilliance of her suggestion. "What can I do to avoid this with the new suits?"

"I always rinse in the shower to get the chlorine out of the suit before I change into my clothes."

"You guys shower?" I asked.

"You don't?" she asked.

"We just put sweatpants on over our suits."

"Why don't you shower?"

"I'm not sure. None of the other guys do. Maybe because Mrs. Rush comes in after every practice."

"I hadn't thought of that. I guess I didn't notice." She sounded contemplative.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"Well, if there was a male dive coach, would he go in the women's locker room while the women showered?"

"That's another good point. How does she get away with it?" I asked with righteous indignation.

"I bet it's because of the equal employment laws." Natalie said.

"What?"

"Back in 1978, a court ruled that female reporters had to be let into the men's locker rooms after games. Newspapers had story deadlines, and each paper wanted to scoop the others. Interviewing players in the locker rooms gave male reporters a half hour advantage on deadlines and scoops. Plus, they got more candid responses before the players could spin things too much. Since women reporters were at a disadvantage, the court ruled they had to be let in, too."

"Let me guess: you're majoring in journalism," I said.

"Pre-law." She smiled again.

"Do male journalists go into women's locker rooms for the WNBA or whatever?"

"It has happened, but the teams usually have a policy of keeping all reporters out of the women's room for some amount of time after the game." Natalie seemed to relish explaining to me.

"That doesn't seem fair." My righteous indignation was back.

"Get used to it. Women have it much worse with double standards in other situations." Natalie patted my shoulder as a form of commiseration.

"So how does all that apply to Mrs. Rush?" I asked.

"I don't know. Maybe she couldn't coach both teams if she wasn't allowed in the locker room, so she has to be let in for equal employment opportunity."

I shrugged and asked, "would you like to come to my dorm room? I have a new espresso maker that's totally against the rules for dorm room appliances."

"Maybe another time," she said. "I want to take a hot shower and go to bed. I have an eight a.m. ethics class that puts me to sleep even when I've had a full night's rest. Swim practice is turning me into a zombie.

I smiled and said I'd see her at the next practice. We went our separate ways, and as I walked home, I replayed her telling me about the see-through suit at least a dozen times. I felt queasy. I'm sure it's because of the way I thought about my body as a kid, but knowing she not only saw but "studied" my goods made me feel nauseous.

~~~~~ ~~~~~

I read my detergent box, and it didn't contain bleach. In fact, it said not to use it with chlorine bleach. Maybe the chlorine from the pool reacted badly with it. I ordered two more suits online putting charges on my credit card that I wasn't sure I could pay. I put on both suits and modeled them in front of my mirror. I still didn't see exactly what Natalie meant, but I believed her.

At the first meet, Natalie earned the most points for the women's team, and I earned the second most for the men's team. Both teams still lost, but I was proud of myself.

At my university, the policy was for the visiting teams to share the locker rooms with the home team. There didn't seem to be any problem, except all the visiting team guys showered after the meet. A couple of them kept their suits on, but most showered nude. My eyes bugged out of my head when Mrs. Rush walked right through the steamy shower crowded with naked specimens of masculine athleticism. She even glanced down and smirked once or twice without breaking her walking pace.

The other team's coach was a grizzled old guy. He shook hands with Mrs. Rush as I pulled on my sweatpants. He told her, "Your guys should really shower."

12