Locker Room Lore

 It's a bitter winter day where I am, and it's just a couple days before the New Year. I've been reminiscing, thinking about warm things. One of my favorite memories is my middle school locker room. The building used to be a high school. The big kids wore it out and the school board kindly passed it down to us. We were little boys, 11, 12 and 13.

 We knew the building was decaying around us, but somehow that wasn't important. Take the locker room. It had neutral grey colored walls, a high ceiling with old-fashioned windows. These were the sort of windows with chicken-wire cast into the hazy panes, making the place look like a prison. The pipes were exposed and leaky, haloed with calcified debris leaching down the walls. Lockers wouldn't shut or wouldn't open. Things fell apart around us.  The doors didn't latch and the concrete floor was cracked and tilted. Most of the lighting was working but there were many dark corners and musty hallways.

 But what I loved about that old locker room was its warmth, both physical and emotional. You would come jogging in from the icy field or escape the drafty gym on a cold day, finding the enveloping lure of moist heat wafting from the locker room, which would reach out through the doors and embrace you. A couple of sturdy gas heaters with murmuring fans hung from the ceiling, toiling away with steady glowing heat. Then add the hot showers and a sort of steamy damp-concrete aroma. Half the showers had no heads and were plugged off, reducing us boys to cluster in small groups around the few that sprayed gentle welcome jets, thawing-out our toes and limbs. It was as warm and cozy as being inside Mama's womb again!

 But there was a much kinder service that this utilitarian room could dole out. Through it's stoic skeleton, the sultry steaming pipes and tile blocks brought forth our innate camaraderie, which unified and asserted us kids into fellows in kind. In the locker room we simply "let it all hang out." People didn't try to hide their bodies. We talked, joked and laughed in happy young nudity, unaware that anybody might ever complain about it. We stared at the guys with prematurely large dicks, and they pointed and laughed at our little ones. I learned a new vocabulary in my first week in the locker room: Dick, prick, cock. Cunt, pussy. Boner, stiffie, hard-on. Shit, crap, turd. Our sudden maturity could be summed up like this: "From wee-wee to piss in three days."

 Nobody had to tell us that these were not words we spoke in front of our grandmothers. We simply knew there was a difference between the locker room and the outside world.

 My first hint of a sexual contact happened in the locker room. A boy who was changing next to me leaned close, stuck his mouth near my ear and whispered, "God, I need to jack off." That's the sort of bond the locker room fostered, combining bluntness with secrecy. I said "So do I" in answer to his statement. But my reply was a bare-faced lie. I had not the slightest clue as to what he was talking about. Why he picked me to confide in, I'll never know. But after a little private conversation and a search for a "safe" restroom, he assisted me well over the hump.

 I don't remember his name but I'll never forget his touch as he examined my little erection. The second he laid fingers on me I became instantly super-erect. After just a few seconds of coaching I arrived at my first slightly scary ejaculation while he steady pumped away on his own dick.

 The building was a wreck but it was a warm place in more than one way, it nurtured dumb little dweebs like me into horny adolescence.

NED