So, this happened to me a while ago. To provide context, please read this link. It’s important that you read it. I’ll wait. Go ahead.
Welcome back.
I’d first read that link many years ago. I found it pretty amusing. Because I run on treadmills, do weights, play racquetball, and things like that, I’ve spent many hours in the gym, so I’ve seen all kinds of interesting behavior.
My personal favorite continues to be the guy that came in carrying his exercise clothes in a KFC bucket. If this had happened in downtown Seattle, where I live, I would have just assumed that this was a clever hipster making some subtle comment regarding the intersection of obese fast food America with the fitness obsessed, let’s spend an hour on a stair climber America. But no, this was at an LA Fitness in Renton, which, by civil ordinance, does not allow hipsters to reside within city limits. This was probably just a guy that looked at his relatively small pile of exercise clothes and a leftover fast food dinner and made a connection.
However, I’d never seen any man standing naked in front of a blow dryer, drying off his balls.
Until now…
What makes this even worse was that this was at the local Boeing fitness center. I go there most mornings to either do weights or to run on the treadmill. I think that I’d just finished a run and taken a shower. The shower area at this fitness center is nice in that each shower has kind of an enclosed area for changing. Therefore, you can take your clothes off, hang them up, take your shower, and change into your clothes without ever having to expose your naughty bits to the community at large. This is nice because, I guess I’m a prude, I don’t really relish sharing naked space with someone that shortly you might be standing in front of giving a PowerPoint presentation to. I realize that to alleviate nervousness while public speaking that people recommend visualizing your audience naked, but I have no need to be able to do so with such absolute anatomical accuracy.
So, all dressed and properly attired, I step out of my shower cubicle. I turn to my right, and what do I see, but a naked co-worker in front of a hand dryer. Before I could turn away in horror, he turns it on and thrusts his groin upward to maximize the heat. He then grabs a hand towel, places it over his genitalia, and proceeds to rub extremely vigorously. I’m talking so vigorously that I was half expecting to start seeing smoke. I’m talking so vigorously that I wasn’t exactly sure if maybe this was veering off into an act that I really didn’t want to be a witness to.
I make a somewhat desperate move to extricate myself from the situation. He sees me (and he does knows me), and he gives me a zero fucks look and continues his absolutely thorough drying process.
Now, I’m not going to give the name of this person because I know that with such a heavily read blog as mine that it will inevitably get back to him, but I will say his last name is Forrest.
I hastily ran up to the third floor, where I work. There, in desperation, shock and horror, I explained to my co-workers what I had just witnessed. There was no way that I could keep this crime against humanity to myself.
As I was breathlessly describing the horror of it all, my friend, Wes, turned to me and said, “So you’re saying that you couldn’t see the Forrest for the tree?”.
Well played sir. Well played.
dorkenstein 