r/MaleCommunalShowers

When I was younger, my parents supported a private school in the mountains of southern Mexico that served several villages of native Mexicans. Every summer, groups of supporters would travel down there to help the school with projects. My parents would do training for the teachers, but us young guys would do hard labor, usually helping to build or renovate buildings. Typically, we stayed in the dorms; parents and young kids in their own, and us middle school, high school, college, and single adults jammed into others. The dorms were very spartan. Four bunk beds, two four drawer dressers (one drawer per bed) and a bathroom in the back. The dorm buildings were two stories tall with exterior halls and outside stairs on either end, like a motel.

The bathroom was simple: sink and mirror in the middle, shower to the right, toilet to the left. Curtains were all that separated the shower and toilets from the sink, and the sink was wide open to the rest of the room. There were cinderblock walls between the toilet and shower, and the main sleeping area. There was no place to change in the bathroom, so there was a lot of towel dancing before and after showering. (We also would steal peoples' towels off the hook just outside the shower, but after a few minutes teasing, always gave it back. No one ever had to walk out of the shower naked. We were too nice, but I fantasized what hijinks the boys who lived there for a semester got into. My favorite fantasy is my roommates stealing my towel, taking my drawer of clothes, hiding it on the other side of campus, telling me they gave it to another dorm room, me going to all the other rooms naked to ask if they have my clothes, which of course no one does, and then finally being told the truth and having to streak across campus).

As interesting as the dorm showers were, they weren't really communal. (I definitely got excited every time I showered knowing the only thing that separated my naked body from the other guys was a thin shower curtain; and every time they stole my towel, I secretly wished they wouldn't give it back). The gym showers were very communal though.

The gym was a large concrete structure topped by a metal roof. It was used for both basketball and indoor soccer games. One of the short sides abutted the old single story dorms, which was now used as a large storage room. When the stands were full, people would climb onto there to watch the game. When the stands were full, one long side had concrete bleachers that went up all the way to the roof. The other long side was open to the outdoors with only a short, maybe four foot wall to keep the ball inside. The last short side was a concrete wall with a concessions window (with a kitchen behind it) in the middle, and bathrooms on either side. Behind these was the dining hall (so the kitchen could serve both the gym and the dining hall).

The bathrooms doubled as locker rooms. They had three doors: a main double door in the center, and two single door entrances on either side, one that led into the dining hall, and the other into the gym. Walking in through the main double doors, you'd find the sink and mirrors in front of you. To your left, towards the dining hall, were stalls and a trough urinal with no dividers. To your right, towards the gym, was the shower room with a bench on the near side, and the shower heads on the far side. There was nothing separating these three areas. Except for the dividers around the toilet stalls, the bathroom was wide open. The boys' showers were slightly more exposed than the girls', because the main double doors for the girls faced an undeveloped side of the mountain, while the boys' doors opened into the center of campus.

For years I wondered what it would be like to use the gym showers. If anyone came in while I was showering, they and anyone in the vicinity of the open door, would see me naked. I imagined showering during meal time, and someone opening the dining room hall, and exposing me to a packed room. If you haven't figured it out, the fastest route from the stands to a toilet is straight through the shower area. I fantasized about being on a sports team and showering after a game while a stream of fans flowed through to use the bathroom, some even stopping to talk to me while I stood there naked under the showers. The door would be open more than it was closed, maybe even propped open to facilitate the flow of people and to vent the steam, there being no fan or vent in the bathroom. With all those people passing through the shower area, my towel and sports bags were bound to disappear occasionally, whether by accident, by a mischievous friend or family member, or by a bully or upset opposing fan. Regardless, I would be left to streak through the crowd and across campus to my dorm (where, without a key, I would have to wait naked for someone to let me inside).

I tried to work up the courage to use the gym showers, but never could. Us guys always joked about them, and would dare each other to use them, but no one ever did.

And then one year, the big project we were tasked with doing was repainting the dorms. The project was organized so half the dorms would be painted and left to dry, then the parents, young kids, and young women would move into the newly painted dorms, and we'd repaint the rest. But there weren't enough dorm rooms left for the young guys. Instead, they cleared out the old dorms next to the gym that were now used as storage rooms, piled in bunk beds, and gave us that. Space wise, it worked out quite well. The building was split into two big rooms by a wall with a narrow gap allowing access between them. The high school and middle school boys took one side. The single men and college boys took the other. Each room had a single sink, but no toilet or shower. We were told to use the gym showers.

My gay heart jumped a little. We were going to have to use the communal showers, all dozen or so of us, for two weeks. I mentally tabulated how often I would be seen naked, and see other people naked. Life on these trips was exhausting. Breakfast was at 5:00 AM, work started at 6:00 AM and went all the way to 6:00 PM (we did have breaks for morning snack, lunch, and afternoon siesta), dinner at 7:00 PM, and then us young guys would play basketball or soccer against locals guys in the gym till around midnight. Daily showers were a necessity, and most of us young guys who did manual labor all day showered twice a day (before dinner and before bed).

Sadly, it was not to be. Most of the younger guys simply went to their parents' dorm to shower. The older college and single men made signs that they put on the bathroom doors to let people know when someone was showering, and only one person ever showered at a time. I frequently "forgot" to put up the sign, but people always knocked or heard the water running. I could have barged in to shower when I knew someone else was there, but I was too scared to do that and be labeled a perv. I was seen naked or saw someone naked a grand total of zero times that trip. Over a dozen guys needing to shower twice a day, with only two small windows to shower during, and somehow they made it work so no more than one person was in the gym shower at a time. Talk about a let down.

In retrospect, I understand. The society we came from had made communal nudity not normal, and the older men were protecting the younger men from embarrassment and possibly predation. But I do wish we lived in a society where single genders being naked together in common areas was considered normal and non-sexual, instead of becoming more and more taboo. But it was quite a disappointment for a young gay male who had very little opportunity to explore his exhibitionist side at home.

Anyway, in conclusion, I mentioned to one of the school staff members about how open the gym showers were, and asked if the school sports teams actually used them after games and practices. He just snorted and said in broken English, "Of course. The men and boys all skinny dip at the spring. No big deal." Now I had been to this spring before. It was further into the mountains, and quite a strenuous hike. But the water was cold and clear, and the pool deep, with many great rocks and ledges to jump from. Absolutely fantastic. It was tradition that on Sunday after lunch, us guys would hike up there with some local guys to go swimming. But no one ever skinny dipped. Us Americans had brought swim trunks. The locals wore whatever shorts they had. The guy snorted again. "We only wear shorts for you gringos."

I hated so many things about American society right then, and I hated those Mexicans for acquiescing to American prudishness. All I could think was, "Please don't stop skinny dipping just because you think your sexy naked Mexican bodies would offend me. I promise they won't!"

NB: My older brother fell in love with the daughter of one of the Mexican school trustees (the school board was split evenly between Americans and Mexicans with one Canadian to make it an odd number). During college, he spent a whole summer down there living with them and working at the school teaching ESL classes to teachers and others in the surrounding villages. He came back with stories of skinny dipping at the spring at least once a week. If envy could kill, it would have. Sadly, no school trustee had a cute gay son that I fell in love with to give me an excuse to spend the summer down there skinny dipping (but boy did I have fantasies about skinny dipping with the locals, them stealing my clothes, me having to hike naked with my cute fully clothed Mexican boyfriend who had zero interest in me getting dressed, then having to streak through the village and across campus to get to my room, and finally my cute Mexican boyfriend making me earn his help in getting my clothes back from the others by doing some very naughty things).

P.S. Sadly, the school is now closed. The great recession hurt donations. The Catholic church (always having opposed a non-church school) and local government (always looking for a cut of the American money funding the school) made it too difficult to operate, and the unique support method of getting Americans and Canadians invested in the school by getting them physically there frequently to create a community by helping to build the school, meet students and parents, train teachers, and more was no longer safe to do because of cartels. In fact, shortly after I graduated college, a group was coming back and nearly got kidnapped by a cartel (thankfully, one of the Mexican trustees had decided to travel with them. Apparently, he was well connected and got them on their way after only a few hours delay). That was the last trip any support group ever made. The school continued on, but support dried up, and finally it became a casualty of COVID. I have heard that many of the former teachers carry on the goal of providing education to Native Mexicans in the remote villages of the Mexican mountains using the curriculum developed for the school, and there have been reports that former teachers have even travelled to indigenous villages in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Hey y’all, 18 yo dude here, didn’t know where to ask this very specific question but this gym I just signed up for happens to have these open showers (communal i guess?) and im genuinely wondering how i get comfortable with using them because the most i’ll do is take off my shirt in the locker room but to be completely balls out naked in front of others is new and ngl a little nerve racking. I know i dont have to do it but I kind of want to just do something other people do since a lot of the guys at my gym use the showers and the saunas. I need to have the balls to do it 😂

Do you still have communal showers where you live?

I am an 80s child and grew up in NorthEast Pa and we had communal showers in high school. We had to take shower after sports.

I live in Philly now and all the gyms I go to don’t have communal showers.

What is your experience?