"I Am Always Remembering..."

Shower scene from "Boots" on Netflix

This scene from Boots, instantly transported me back nearly 40 years to a similar moment in my life. When I was in boot camp, this was the most stressful time of the day. Communal showers and toilets were dangerous places if you were secretly gay, especially before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." During shower time, you had to concentrate and avert your eyes to avoid inadvertently giving away your secret with an involuntary erection. 

 

This part of the recruit day was made even harder because in your company of 80 or so young men, there were always a few body-proud fellas who made a point of making sure everyone got a good look at their toned bodies and above average endowments. I remember one of these fellas in my recruit company would make a point of stroking himself under the water while leaning with his other hand on the wall until he had a pretty rigid hardon, then he'd literally strut out of the shower room towel-less with a heavy erection bouncing in front of him. The first time I saw this, I realized my self-control was about to fail me. Thankfully, I was so afraid of being discovered that fear did a great job of helping me keep things in check. After seeing that fella's exhibition the first time, I made it a point to stay as far away from him and the other machos as possible at shower time. When I got to service school though, things got a lot harder.

In service school, you're still in companies of 50 to 80 men with each company occupying a single floor of a mulit-story barracks building. But there you had more freedom to go about your day outside of schooling. The housing was dormitory style and the day was much less regimented than it was during recruit training. We were 4 men to a room and there were 4 bathroom on the floor, each with a shower room that could accommodate up to 6 men showering at once. But since you could choose when you wanted to shower, I'd always wait until late in the evening after most of my company had already showered, this in the hopes that I'd be alone for mine. That strategy worked well for most of the year I was there for gun school, except for once. 

I'll never forget the one time when it was late in the evening as usual when I decided it would be safe to take my shower. It was a Saturday night. On the weekend many of the men in the company were gone on liberty. Most of the 15 or 20 who were not spending the weekend away from the base had already showered and so I thought it safe for me to get my own. I had just stripped away my towel and stepped under the water when I heard the door open and in strode a handsome well-built guy I'd noticed in the ranks but who I didn't really know by name. He came in like I did, wearing only a towel. But in his case, it was poorly restraining a raging hardon. He smiled at me as he tore the towel away from his waist giving me a head to toe view of his bodybuilder physique and shockingly huge and throbbing veiny hardon. I quickly turned away after acknowledging him with a nod. I realized immediately, that my own member had decided to rise to the occasion and so I tried to stand under the water in an oblique stance trying to hide it. 

The shower stall was just a large tiled room with 3 shower heads on one wall and 3 more on the opposite side. As a general rule the etiquette in the showers was the same as you'd expect at the urinals; you'd leave a space between you and the next guy, or in this situation, choose one on the other side of the room since I was under the center shower head. I expected we'd be showering opposite each other. So no worries, I'd be able to hide my reaction to the sight his masculine body and what I thought at time must have been his personal pride. But to my surprise, instead of taking a wide berth as he joined my in the showers, he brushed against me as he passed and took up the space next to me on my left. This put me in quite a predicament as I again turned my oblique stance away from him, but this meant if anyone else came in, they'd immediately see my own excited state. As he began to shower and soap himself up, he started softly moaning as he ran his washcloth over his bulging muscles. 

As he continued to wash himself, I was praying for my own member to go flaccid as I tried to rinse myself without turning my body towards him. Despite there being plenty of space between the shower heads, he brushed against my shoulder first, and then my waist and thigh. It was all too much for me to bear and I turned to look in his direction to see he'd begun to stoke his still raging erection. As our eyes met, he flashed me an inviting excited grin. I was shocked as I'd never had such an experience, even though I was a twenty something virgin in every sense of the word. After a few seconds of this surreal moment in my life, his expression changed to a decidedly more lusty one. He was staring down at what was now my own raging erection. Realizing my own state, I was incredibly afraid and yet unsurprisingly intrigued by the situation I found myself in. All this made me wash myself all the more quickly.

While it was clear to me that my shower buddy was open to an encounter of some sort, I was trembling with fear under the steaming water raining down on us both. I was frozen in place by a strange mix of fear, wonder, desire and amazement. Just as perhaps I might have allowed myself a long desired freedom to find out if what I'd known about myself since I was 5 years old was really true, a raucous and noisy group passing in the hallway outside the bathroom door woke me up from what seemed like a dream state. Instantly, fear of discovery sapped all of the blood from my nether regions and my head, I felt a little faint as I quickly snatched my towel from the hook and wrapped it around me. 

I didn't even bother to dry myself. I walked as quickly as I could dripping water all the way down the hallway back to my room. Thankfully, my one roommate who was still on base that weekend wasn't in our room. I dried myself and the floor, I put on underwear and clamored into my rack. As I laid there all alone questioning myself about why I was so afraid, while still trembling, I began fantasizing about what might have happened... I'm sure I dreamed about it that night, but I don't remember... I remained a virgin until I was 32 years old and made love  had sex for the first time with my wife on our wedding night. It was one divorce and 8 years later, and about a week before I turned forty that I would lose my virginity again, this time while actually making love to a man that I still deeply love and remember fondly.

I am always remembering...