IT'S A MANZ WORLD

HORSING AROUND - Note: Most of my Manz World stories are fictionalized accounts of how the painting shown here came to be. However, some of the stories are rooted in truth.

As a freshman in college I lived in a dorm. Fortunately, I was assigned to the newest of the dorms, built only five years earlier. It was plain in style but modern. Unlike most of the dorms today, the bathroom, which was located at the end of our hallway, was a classic one. By classic, I mean it was designed to be open: one large room with a row of sinks—8 or 10—lining one wall with number of urinals and toilet stalls lining the opposite side of the room, all without privacy doors. Adjacent to that area was a gang shower: a large tiled room with eight shower heads, four each protruding from opposite walls.

Since I was used to this kind of bathroom set up from my years of swimming at the YMCA, it did not bother me to have a number of naked guys around me doing whatever was needed: shaving at the sinks, taking a ‘dump’ in the toilet or showering in the shower room. Nor did it bother my roommate, Jerry, who was not at all shy when it came to being naked in that bathroom. And, like me, he was not shy about being naked in our room either. It’s not that we hung out naked all the time but upon coming back from the showers, usually with only towels wrapped around us, it was a common thing for us to see each other naked as we continued to dry off in the room. In addition, since our building was not air conditioned, on a hot night both Jerry and I would sleep with as little on a possible, sometimes in boxers, sometimes naked.

Unlike Jerry and me, there were guys who roomed on our floor who found exposing their naked bodies a bit of a challenge since they were not use to this kind of open bathroom. During the first few weeks of the semester, when I would enter the shower room, it was not unusual to see guys hurrying to end their shower or, if still in the process of washing themselves, turn their backs toward me in order to hide their ‘privates.’ Ultimately, they, too, would quickly end showering and exit into the area where their towels were hanging. And even there they would be quick in their drying off.

However, as the weeks went on, most of the guys got more comfortable with being in that bathroom together, doing whatever they needed to do. After a while, seeing another guy naked was no big deal. In fact, it was not unusual to see some guys standing naked at a urinal or in front of the sink while shaving, either before or after their shower.

As time went on everyone on our floor got to know each other well, some becoming good friends. And, as many young guys do, we would get playful and do, what my father called, “horsing around.” That would sometimes happen when several guys were ending their shower. As they began to dry off one guy would take his towel and snap it toward another guy, hitting the guy on his back or leg or butt. Once that started, others would begin to do the same. The target would either be one guy who had drawn attention because of a comment or, if we were exceptionally playful, we would begin snapping towels on the back or leg or butt of the guy closest to us. It was always done in fun, never meaning to hurt anyone.

To celebrate that time of adolescent fun I painted a scene of what happened during that fun time in the dorm bathroom. I’m calling the painting “Horsing Around.”