BuckCanucked

Thank you for your candid response. Those of us in this age range gave up a lot due to cultural pressure and the specter of HIV. I'm honestly in awe of men my age who've been out and proud all along. I have/had the benefit of legit bisexuality and being a hetero-romantic, I leaned into that - but I do think I missed out on some seriously good times by remaining exclusively part of the straight world until very recently.

FunFact: Raw milk and hot tubbing in denim cures all, unless you take Tylenol. I saw it on the interwebs.

My phone-phone is both business and personal. So I use a burner... and glad I did as one provider was into me (or my wallet) and aggressively pursued a follow up, texting regularly, even suggesting he'd travel to me. I don't need the hassle of that on a phone I use for business and a number I've had since before Cosby was a felon. I'd only share my number to one provider I trust but no need as my burner works fine for him as well.

I've noticed a lot of members here came of age during or before the HIV/AIDS crisis, when transmission was not well understood, infection was high, deaths in the community soaring, and spreading to hetero and drug using populations. Gays and bis my age (60) and especially slightly older found themselves in a world of misery around them. I came of age just as the scare was at its peak, so I opted for abstinence (via suppression of m2m attraction) and hetero LTRs saw me safely through it. How are you here? Luck? Abstinence? Partnered? Just fortunate it didn't develop to AIDS until treatments came along? How is everyone living with it/around it now? Are we all on prep? More demanding about condoms? I knew of related deaths well into the early 90s. How are you younger guys, especially providers, living with that spectre, or are you really even cognizant of the world-changing impact of the virus in a post-prevention and treatment world? (Like black death, even measles and polio, I think our memories of such scourges are short).

Here's a broad, general comment that will make me a pariah on this board: A neck tattoo conveys different energy, but the same message, to me that a bible verse does on a Facebook profile or contractor's truck: "I'm gonna screw you over, its just a matter of time." To be fair, I'd sooner put my trust in the neck tattoo though. Unless the tat is a crucifix. 🙄

This is why we can't have nice things. 😀

"We sauna naked but have never see one another naked," That's a learned skill. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVwrq9xEqfz/

There was enough horseplay in an area of hard wet surfaces I don't fault the supervision, but moreover, showers were a great equalizer as well. Generally we showered in silence (get it over with quick and get out) or horseplay- I remember a bully once sarcastically saying "Ooo...(Buck) you're such a man!" In a crowd of about a dozen of us. To which I replied, "you would look there!" Shut him down quick, in and out of gym class for a while. What's he going to do? Jump me? The little shit.

In fact, in the 70s shy dudes got roasted more than they would have if they just embraced their baby fat, hairless state, or size. That's what the body positivity and clothes free movements promote. Very few of us are perfect and even then its subjective, and we learn physical and mental health is paramount, leading to better outcomes than letting the video game and cheetos crowd shower in private at home. Or at all.

Wrestling should remain a sport requiring thorough showers because of the viruses spread by skin to skin contact. I've found that wrestlers and rugby players have a more old fashioned sensibility about communal bathing. I never saw any untoward behavior in a sauna until I started frequenting a KSpa a few years ago and there it is out-and-out brazen, to the point that signs are everywhere forbidding the practice. I now go on weekend days which are more family days and that behavior doesn't happen at those times. I hope.

My understanding is that as your PE (gym) period got later in the day they got more lax about enforcement, to the extent that the last period of the day was often assigned to kids who had some physical or religious objection or were special ed. The reason was that classroom teachers would complain about smelly boys in their classrooms. Today they must complain about teaching in a fog of Axe Body Spray instead. I never cared and showered at every opportunity because I was a secret naturist at an early age and enjoyed the public experience.

Well, given some of the responses here I think its the adults that would be uncomfortable from the leering eyes of pubescent boys. Anyway, I never experienced cubicle showers until private gyms took off in the 80s/90s. I don't get them from a users perspective... its far easier to clean an open area with fewer nooks and crannies... and one would think an open shower would discourage bad behavior, from cruising to peeing in the shower room. Frankly, I miss the horseplay and comaraderie of a shower room, where casual nudity a catalyst for that, not the goal.

In our classes we bought two sets of gym clothes (provided by the school) to rotate as part of back-to-school. If you forgot to take them home from school at least once a week showers weren't going to help your smell. I also have read about, but have no personal memory of, kits and even shared jocks to grab as you entered the lockerroom, laundered by the school. The swimsuit thing seems like where that started, as nude swimming was for the filters and as suits were introduced it allowed uniformity of color and material. Official high school competitive kit were laundered by the school and handed out before meets and collected after.

This wasn't the intent. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't sexual. Just a random high school memory that I found, in retrospect, a bit unusual as everyone seemed so blasé about it at the time, even me... intergenerational showering is typical and non-sexual, but looking back I'm surprised mostly at the implied power dynamic. It frankly smacks more of European sensibilities than North American ones, where nudity = no clothes, versus nudity = immediately spin up the Barry White LP. (I never found showers or locker rooms stimulating anyway, even among guys my own age.)

I just did a bit of sleuthing, the teacher retired from the classroom in 2003 and just coached a few years after that, but started teaching 10 years before I was there. So maybe 30s, not 40s, at the time. A long-timer in one school so clearly wasn't an issue, at least not a career ending one.