What is it that’s so handsome about a slow-moving man? I am staring at an exemplar specimen of hasteless grace. He removes his clothes one article at a time, then tenderly places them in his locker, one article at a time. What makes his movements so elegant? I'm nothing like him; I am totally jarring when I disrobe in the locker room because I fail to let the essence of any motion linger. I carelessly sever each gesture’s allongé in my anxious rush onto the next one, the secession of hurried actions yielding only stilted staccato to his legato. Oh how he dances! That placid look on his face, he’s in no rush whatsoever.

I finish changing and run to take a piss, but I have to stop back at my locker because I forgot to take off my watch before starting my workout. Somehow this man is still at his locker, still delicately putting on his gym clothes one article at a time. So damn handsome.

I leave the locker room and do a few pull ups, but I decide I’d rather take a sauna, so I go and take a sauna. I’m sitting in the sauna with one of those lanky, beardy guys who sits cross-legged in the middle of the den and adds excess water to the coals like he owns the place, and after a few minutes unhurried Mr. Some Hands comes in as well and, with imperious Beardy taking up so much room on the upper bench that only he and I can fit on the coveted upper level, sits on the bench below me. The three of us repose in silence, tranquil, focusing on our breathing and dealing with the excess steam from agro Beardy — and thank God every time someone opens the door and lets in some cool air. Finally, Beardy leaves, and it’s just me and Hands.

Technically, we’re silent, but I’m still too wound up in my head from the day and the week and the whole month and, really, my whole goddamn life to internalize this speechlessness as “quiet.” Exhaling slowly helps a bit.

Outside the glass door, a naked man with a pencil dick is toweling off. I’m staring at it and thinking to myself, we all need this, don’t we? Poor guy is doing every single man in this locker room a favor, the patron saint of the masculine ego. I don’t just notice his dick, as the universal edicts of locker room etiquette command, but really give the prickster a great stare, then relax my towel around my waist.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Hands remarks to me as he glides from the lower bench to the higher one, taking lord Beardy’s thrown. I’m really not sure which ‘it’ he is referring to. The sauna feels good, but so does the mental image of that guy out there, confidently parading his point-five lead pistol. They both feel good, and given Hands’ timing and my excessive dick-staring, I’m really concerned that he’s noticed my voyeurism and is referring to how good it feels seeing the guy’s pencil ‘it’. So all I say is, “yeah, it does.”

Hands and I sit in silence for our remaining five minutes together in the sauna, and then he leaves and I’m alone. I loosen my towel completely, look down to peep how my dangle is hangin’, and take in the heat. I stretch a bit and spread out on the upper sauna bench, inheriting the mantel of sauna entitlement that Beardy left in trust. After a few minutes, I look up, and there is none other than Some Hands outside the sauna window, toweling off! I admire his frame, and begin to admire his handsome hanger — noice, the man is stacked! He looks up at me through the window and because I’m sedated by the heat and his intoxicating leisure, I fail to avert my gaze with the courteous hastiness of a “this was only an accidental glance,” so he, flinching with unbecoming urgency, jolts up and abruptly pivots away from my violating gaze with a shocked, almost hurt, expression on his face. Understandable: at this point I’m so sprawled out in the sauna that I have one leg bent up on the bench, so my dick on display hanging low (I hope); basically I’m sitting spread eagle gawking at him through the window with one hand running through my thinning hair, the other propping my weight as I admire his presence, my eyes as green as apples.

His pas de chat was so quick, so modest and self-aware. I’ve ruined him! I’m ashamed, so I close my eyes and look down, but now I’m worried he’ll think I’m just looking at my own penis again, so I pretend to stretch. By the time I sneak in another glance, it seems Hands has regained his chaste and is back to his unhurried manner. Every time I look up he’s still out there toweling off, not a single unnecessary action potential firing in any muscle in his smooth face. Thus I remain in the sauna, sweating out of my head, waiting for him to finish so I can avoid him.

Eventually on one of my glances he’s gone. I sit in the sauna another few minutes, then take a shower, and go back to my locker to scramble into my clothes and get home as fast as I can.

Published on November 19, 2012 in Other