I‘ve been going to the gym since Christmas and have just had a fitness test - I’m in tip-top condition, and have lost 8 kg - that’s well over a stone, in old money.

I feel much better, I’ve more energy, and in the last month people have begun to compliment me on how well I’m looking, how much weight I’ve lost. I never realised that people are so aware of weight. Or how obvious my weight gain last year must have been.
Anyway. The gym I’ve chosen is one across the way from where I work, and it’s a well-run, friendly place, a little on the expensive side – but that just tends to act as a spur to keep going, I’m determined not to waste my hard-earned dosh.
As with all gyms, it’s a case study in narcissism, with quite a few muscle-bound peacocks strutting around. But it’s not a cruisy gym at all – it’s predominantly men in their thirties and forties keeping fit, playing squash, working off the spare tyres. Mostly married, they are in the main a genial but non-invasive lot. The staff have a good sense of humour. It suits me fine.
About ten years ago, I used to go to a gym that was full of gay men, and the atmosphere was very different. It was both exciting and, at the same time, deeply frustrating, for it was a highly competitive arena. The exhibitionism was relentless, and the intense stares of cruising gay men got me down, undermined my confidence. The excitement of lingering a bit too long in the sauna or shower, the games of peek-a-boo and the subtle or not-so-subtle mating rituals of men rutting, were compelling and distracting. I ended up forgetting the reason I went there; in the end, the main purpose of going – keeping fit – seemed boring, pointless.
This time around, I’m a man in my forties, and it makes a big difference. I don’t take health for granted any more – and I’ve had to work hard to get to these levels of fitness and energy, and even then my knees give a twinge every now and again, and I have to take it easy. What keeps me going is not narcissism (although that doesn’t mean I’m tearing up my membership card to Narcissist’s Anonymous quite yet) – it’s fear of getting old and decrepit. Simple.
Last week, though, someone put on a show in the gym changing room that disturbed me on many different levels. A young man with an enormous dick was displaying himself, in steely provocation, unsmiling, almost hostile, challenging everyone there to look at him. No one could miss it – he was standing squarely in the middle of the room, holding his ample hose and fingering the end of it, as if to rub a bit of fluff from the end, nonchalantly. He had shaved every bit of hair off his body - he wasn’t that tall, but he was very defined and lean. He had a pinched face that could easily have come from inner-city Limerick or Glasgow – hard, tiny eyes.
Normally, when someone puts on a show like this, it’s aimed at someone in particular, and of course I thought it was me, at first. I locked into his gaze and felt myself churn inside, that heavy deep tug in the guts that signals an end to rationality. But it soon became obvious his exhibitionism was global - he demanded that all present admire him – and also, perversely, completely insular, in that it he was doing it all primarily for himself; we, the observers, were irrelevant. He was the provocateur, queering the pitch. The rest of the men in the changing room feigned ignorance; as, I suppose, did I. Nothing was said, nothing happened. On the surface.
I wonder what it would have been like for those men if a naked nubile Amazon had stood there in the middle of the room, with shaved pubes, fingering the nipples on her enormous, perfect breasts, with the same insouciance? What would the guys have done then? I suspect that, probably, they’d have broken into a collective cheer. I suspect, too, that there would have been a humourous reaction, some way of discharging the electricity safely, for most men are gentle, in my experience. But I also imagine there’d have been some undercurrents that weren’t so pleasant. Because I was experiencing a lot of really unpleasant feelings watching this young man flaunt his phallic power.
I hated the way his actions ripped through my composure, as if he’d poked an anthill under my feet, and I was crawling with lust and irritation and envy and admiration and pleasure and, ultimately, a sense of rejection. I wanted to possess what he had. And it wasn’t just his cock – he had a stunning body, and a pair of buttocks that would bring tears to your eyes. I wanted to command him in the same way as he was commanding me. I hated feeling so powerless. I wanted revenge. I wanted him to stop. I wanted to punish him. In a flash, I understood the impulse in misogynistic cultures to make women conceal their bodies, to forbid the exercising of this primal power.
I wish I could have just admired him, or ignored him. But he was beaming out loud on my wavelength, and my speakers were blown.
I felt light-headed. As this was not a gay venue the rules were not obvious. As he gazed at me it felt like a heavy cruise, the like of which in a park or a club would have me on my knees in an instant. As it was, I found myself doing the worst possible thing: I smiled.
Will I ever learn? Smiling and this sort of sex do not mix. This was hard sex, horny sex, and his life was probably highly tuned into the power he wields with his enormous knob. Perhaps he was on the game. Anyway, my smile was a sort of “I know what you’re doing and it’s outrageous and I’m interested but I’m not playing the game and why don’t you smile as if we’re being friendly and snap out of this trance?” kind of smile. But he stared through me, as if my smile meant nothing. The urban cruel-cool. I then immediately felt like a fool. Again. For by taking the smiling route and failing, future interaction became impossible – the opening gambit had been trounced. Victor to the aggressor. The only thing to do was to retreat, lick my wounds, and to try to forget about him.
I spoke to a colleague afterwards about the way I felt. He used the language of sex addiction, saying that this guy had “triggered” something in me, my addiction.
He meant well. But I do not know a man alive who would not react at some level in the same way to such provocation, by a member of the desired sex. That sort of power brings us to our knees, in fantasy or reality, and it can overwhelm us like nothing else. I’m not sure that women react in the same way to such visual stimulation – I know some women who would feel the same, but I also know more women who would think along the lines of: “silly boy, put your toy away and stop showing off.”
Addiction is not the right discourse to describe this interaction, this lightning bolt of eroticism. It’s too universal an experience for men. Such visions of beauty, of power, of perfection, are hardwired in our brains – they challenge us to our core, they bring out the best and the worst in us.
Again. And again. And again.