The Boys Locker Room Doesn’t Feel Like A Real Place, Actually
I’ve played team sports on and off since I was 12, and spent hundreds of hours hanging around boys and men’s locker rooms waiting for practice to start, changing out of muddy cleats, dodging the puddle that always forms by the water fountain. But I still don’t buy that they’re a real thing. Not the one everyone talks about, anyway. You know the one—this unfiltered, off-the-record space where guys drop all the niceties for the outside world and say what they really think, joke about whatever they want, no performative decency. I’ve never seen that place. I don’t think it exists.
My first high school JV soccer locker room smelled like expired spearmint gum, mildew from the showers that never fully dried, and that cheap citrus body spray one senior named Tyler wore through every single practice, even after it got stolen out of his locker twice. The lockers were all dented, most of the locks didn’t work if you jiggled ‘em wrong, and the bench had a permanent crack down the middle that always caught the hem of your shorts. I lost two gray Nike hoodies and a favorite pair of sweatpants in that locker room before I graduated. No one ever fessed up.
Freshman year, I was the youngest guy on the team, and I’d read enough YA books and seen enough movies to be nervous. I’d built this whole thing up in my head: I’d walk in, everyone would be naked, judging my body for being too skinny, making fun of me for being the new kid, talking about girls in that gross crude way everyone said they did behind closed doors. I forgot my shower shoes that first day, so I just hovered by my locker for 20 minutes after practice, wrapped in a ratty towel I’d brought from home, too scared to step near the showers even though I was soaked through with sweat and grass stains. Turned out, almost no one showered anyway. Most guys just pulled on their jeans right over their dirty practice shorts, sprayed three pumps of body spray on their necks, and bolted for the parking lot to get to Taco Bell before the after-school rush hit. The only guys who showered were the three varsity seniors who drove to school early and had time to kill before fifth period, and they’d go one at a time, waiting until the whole shower area was empty before they stripped down. No talking, no joking, just fast washing and then out, wrapped in a towel, head down.
Once, sophomore year, I rounded the corner by the exit and heard a group of juniors leaning against the lockers talking about a girl from our AP Bio class. They were saying crude things, laughing loud, being all loud and bro-y, and I thought oh, okay, here it is. This is the famous real locker room everyone talks about. I stood there for a second, awkward, waiting for them to notice me, and then one of them pushed off the locker and walked down the hall, and ten minutes later I found him sitting on the concrete step outside the back entrance, alone, crying into his gym sock because his girlfriend had just broken up with him over text. He jumped when he saw me, swiped at his eyes so fast I almost missed it, and mumbled that he had bad allergies. I just nodded and said yeah, the pollen’s been messing with me too, and kept walking. That’s when it clicked. That loud crude group act was the performance. The crying alone on the step, hiding it from everyone, that was the real part. The locker room isn’t a place where people are real—it’s a place where you put on the show you’re supposed to put on, for the other guys. So how can it be real?
I go to a community gym near my apartment now, I’m 28, and the locker room there is all old wood lockers and tile that’s been scrubbed a million times. Last month I went in after a really garbage spin class, my legs were killing me, and I sat down on the bench to catch my breath before I changed. I remembered all that high school stuff, and I thought, okay, let’s see. Is this the adult version of the boys locker room? Is everyone going to be talking trash, being real? Nope. Every single guy in there had headphones in. One was folding his running clothes so carefully I thought he was packing a wedding suit. Another was brushing his teeth, staring at his reflection like he was examining every single pore. One guy was on FaceTime with his kid, talking quiet about what they wanted for dinner that night. No one looked at anyone else. No one made a crude joke. No one was anything but wrapped up in their own little bubble, trying not to bother anyone.
People talk about the boys locker room like it’s this source of truth, right? If you’re mad about toxic masculinity, it’s where all the real misogyny comes out, hidden from women. If you’re trying to fix men’s mental health, it’s where men learn to hide their feelings, put on the tough act. But both of those arguments take for granted that the locker room is this authentic space. It’s not. It’s the opposite. It’s where you go to perform being the kind of man you think everyone else wants you to be. No one is their real self there. I came out to my team halfway through junior year, and I was so scared everyone would act different in the locker room, like they’d hide or be weird around me. But nothing changed. Because they weren’t being real with each other before I came out, so why would they change after? One guy asked me if I thought his new haircut looked good, I said yeah, it looked good, that was the most any of them said about it for the rest of the year.
Sometimes I wonder if I just never got invited to the real one, you know? Like, there’s some back room somewhere where all the straight real guys hang out, naked, joking, saying whatever they want, no awkwardness. But I don’t actually believe that. I think it’s just a story we made up because it’s convenient. It fits whatever narrative we want to tell about men, that they’re all secretly awful or all secretly hurting, and the locker room is where the truth comes out. But I’ve never seen that truth. All I’ve ever seen is awkward, messy people, all doing the same dance, all trying not to get it wrong, all hiding the parts of themselves they think no one wants to see. The closest I ever got to anything real was that time I saw that crying kid on the step, and we both agreed I hadn’t seen anything. That’s as real as it gets, I think. But that’s not the boys locker room people talk about. So for me, it’s not real. It never was.
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