This one’s more about male-male camaraderie… at least so far. Its location and theme won’t surprise you…
Skye stood outside the men’s locker room at the University of South Dakota, a large paper grocery bag with a rolled top gripped in his hand. His 6 foot framed was dressed in a plain T-shirt and a pair of faded blue shorts, with dirty sneakers. He betrayed no sign of the nervousness he felt creeping up his spine and onto the back of his head. He knew he was about to take a big step, though one he had always hoped for. At eighteen, he was about to enter the world of college athletics, specifically wrestling, and he knew his life would be different.
Dark-haired and gray-eyed, with a firm jaw line and a cultivated serenity in his stoic face, he was, despite his stillness, someone that people noticed. His muscular build, earned from competing on his Reservation’s high school wrestling team in increasing weight classes, caught people’s eye, but there was some other, ineffable quality that made passersby stop their conversations momentarily to look over at him.
He was waiting for Kirk, the wrestling team member and senior who was to be his mentor this freshman year. As he stood like a statue, a 6’3″ brown-haired student, easily 230 pounds and with an open, trusting face, approached him.
“Skye?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Kirk. I’m your mentor on the team this year. Good to see you.”
“Thank you.”
Kirk waited an almost imperceptible moment, expecting the standard reply of “You too” but he somehow knew that Skye’s reticence did not work that way, so he continued: “Come on in, man. I’ll show you your locker and get your settled. You doing okay here on campus?’
“Yes, thank you,” said Skye. Again, silence.
Kirk led him to a row of lockers. The room was starting to fill up with college-aged guys, laughing and joking, a couple of them already stripping off their shirts to change for practice. It was easy to tell the class years of most of the guys. The freshmen still looked like high school students for the most part, and the senior were grown men, muscles proudly on display, even among the lighter weight classes. Indeed, one of the lessons Skye had learned on his Reservation team was that wrestling affirmed a guy’s value, regardless of size; as long as he had muscle and worked hard, he could be a mere 110 lbs and still be respected.
Kirk stopped in front of a shiny locker. “We just had the locker room redone here. I heard some rich alum did it since the state wouldn’t spring for it.”
“Uh huh,” replied Skye.
He gripped his paper bag and sat on the bench, looking at locker 217.
“Mine is right here,” said Kirk. “Tell me about your wrestling background.”
“I wrestled for the reservation not far from here for four years. I would have competed in the regular state high school championships, but they didn’t allow us to participate.”
“That sucks,” said Kirk. “What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” answered Skye, looking Kirk in the eye.
“Yeah, well,” stammered Kirk, “I hope you’ll have a good experience here, man. It’s a great group of guys. I think Coach told me you wrestle in 190 lb class?
“That’s right.”
“Well, we’d better get changed for practice. Don’t wanna be late the first day.”
Skye glanced around the room, his stoic face showing nothing, but he did notice half the guys naked in the process of changing. He opened his bag and pulled out a ratty towel, which he wrapped around his waist. He reached under the towel and pulled off his gym shorts.
Kirk stopped in his tracks and looked at him. “Um… what’s the deal with the towel?”
“What do you mean?” asked Skye. A slight tone of defensiveness crept into his voice.
“I mean… can’t you just change by taking your clothes off? We all do that. No one’s that shy here, and it’s part of the team… plus, it’s just normal.”
Skye hesitated. In a low voice he said, “Sorry. Our school didn’t have a locker room so we had to change in the hall. I just got used to it.” He reached in the bag and pulled out a pair of dingy gray wrestling shorts and a worn t-shirt. He again reached under the towel to pull on his shorts, but his tradition betrayed him and the towel fell, revealing plain Hanes white briefs, though clearly well worn and graying. The waistband was stretched as were the leg holes. Skye reached quickly to pull on the towel, but Kirk, seizing the opportunity, grabbed his hand. The next moment he felt Skye’s iron grip on his own wrist, and he let go.
“Sorry, buddy. It was instinct. I just don’t think you need to worry about that here.”
“Let me worry about whatever I want to,” said Skye.
Kirk looked at him, and his eyes melted Skye’s frostiness a bit.
“Hey, I’ m sorry, Kirk. At my school we kept our distance.” The slight conflict had made him forget for a moment that he was standing there in his brief, wrestling shorts in his hand. He reached again for the towel, but Kirk said, “Dude, just change. No one gives a shit what you look like or what you’re wearing.”
Skye hesitated and looked around, astonished to see the nudity comfort level of the other guys, tugging their cocks and loosening their balls like all guys did in a locker room.
Kirk could see he was out of his element, and he asked, “So how did you guys change at your school?”
“We just found a place in the hall and used the towels like I did. It’s just habit. They didn’t want the girls to see us.”
“Oh, yeah, I suppose that’s true…. Hey wait a sec… does that mean you never saw guys naked in school?”
“Nope. Never.”
“Wow. Weird.”
“Well, it is a different culture.” Skye looked around again and his surprise registered on his normally placid face.
“Well,” said, Kirk, “no need to worry about that here like I said. Just shuck off your stuff and get your practice gear.’
Reassured a little, Skye pulled on the wrestling shorts over his briefs.
“Hang on a second, bud,” said Kirk.” You’re not gonna wrestled in gym shorts with tighty whities underneath, are ya?”
“Sure. That’s what I always did.” He paused, then dropped his voice feeling he could trust Kirk. “Though to be honest, it was a drag. This is the only pair of underwear I’ve got.”
Kirk’s eyebrows rose.”The only pair? You mean… for any thing? Don’t you have a pair in your dorm for going to class or whatever?”
Skye’s silence told him all.
“Wow…” Kirk whistled. “So then, every night you had to wash it…”
“Yeah. My grandma washed em every night, along with my other clothes for school. I used to get grief about wearing the same clothes ever day, but I wasn’t the only one. We were poor. Dirt poor.”
“So then,” resumed Kirk, “you were gonna wrestle in those old shorts and that ratty T-shirt.”
“It’s all I got,” said Skye.
“No, it isn’t,” said Kirk. ” I guess they didn’t tell you. The school provides everything you need, from practice shirt and shorts, practice singlets, jockstrap, everything…”
“Jockstrap?”
“Yeah, jockstrap… wait a sec… do you mean to tell me you don’t know what a jockstrap is?”
“No.”
Kirk sat stunned for a moment, but then remembered his courtesy.
“Oh, well, okay… um.. so here’s mine.” He pulled out a white athletic supporter from his locker. “I wear this for practice and matches. Keeps my balls in place, you know. Pretty important in wrestling.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Some guys go commando, which is obvious at matches, but not me, man. I want my balls protected as best they can be.”
Skye said nothing. He looked at the jock.
With practiced, swift movements, Kirk pulled off his shirt, yanked down his jeans, revealing blue boxer-briefs, which he then also yanked down and before Skye knew it, his mentor was standing naked next to him.
“See?” said Kirk, “it’s just no big deal. You’re gonna have to get over it, man. Lemme show you how to put on a jockstrap.” He opened the waistband wide and stepped into it, pulling it up fully, then bending his legs to adjust his balls in the pouch and running his fingers down the leg straps. Skye’s eyes widened just a bit. He had seen some Native gear resembling this in ceremonies, but he had never in his life seen an athletic supported on a muscled guy a foot away. He became aware that Kirk was talking to him:
“So, you gotta adjust your nuts and get em settled, see? Then you can pull on tight shorts for practice”–he held up a pair of maroon stretchy shorts– “or regular loose gym shorts. I like the wrestling shorts. He pulled those up and they clung to his pouched cock and balls tightly. He readjusted and grinned. “See?”
“Yeah, I see,” said Skye. “But I don’t have one of those.” He took a moment to look around and sure enough, a number of guys were adjusting their balls in their jockstraps and a few were pulling up wrestling shorts without anything underneath. The normal locker room banter continued, including a couple of guys who shot their supporters like rubber bands at their buds, just to harass them and have a laugh.
“Like I said, though,” said Kirk, “The school provides ’em. Look in your locker.”
Skye opened his locker and saw a plastic box a few inches square. Kirk looked in and said, “Yeah, that’s it. It’s new, in a box. Grab it.”
Skye took out the box from his locker and snapped it open.He removed the strap from the box and shook it out. The pure white straps almost gleamed.
“Ok, buddy, time to man up,” grinned Kirk. “Lose the briefs.”
Though he had plenty of Reservation toughness, Skye was nonetheless surprised by his shyness in this circumstance. But he couldn’t lose face, so he reached inside his briefs waist band and slowly pushed them to his ankles and stepped out of them. It was the first time in his life he had been naked in front of another guy.
“There… not so hard, was it? …. I mean…” At that point Kirk glanced at Skye’s penis, as any guy would. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.
“What?” said Skye, almost panicked.
“Oh, sorry, man…. it’s just that… well, sure don’t know what you were all shy about. That’s the biggest fuckin dick I’ve ever seen… and I’ve been in locker rooms for years. You must be super proud.’
Skye blushed. He had no idea about other guys’ penis size, assuming his was the norm.
“Do you always talk about penis size to other guys?” he responded, trying to sound tough.
“Um.. well… actually yeah, now that you mention it. I mean, we joke about dicks all the time here in the locker room. Didn’t you? Oh wait… sorry… you said you didn’t have a locker room.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that just surprises me. I mean, as you can see, the guys here strip and do all kinds of stupid shit with their dicks: twirl ’em around, yank on ’em in some other guy’s face, tugging their balls… it’s pretty normal locker room stuff.”
“I see,” said Sky passively.
” I mean…” Kirk laughed…”Brian over there gets a fuckin hard-on every time he hits the showers! He has for four years! He finally just gave up trying to hide it. When the guys razz him, which they still do, he just says, ‘Yup. The fucker’s got a mind of its own.'”
Skye allowed a smile to form on his lips. “I see.”
“Well,” said Kirk “don’t just stand there jock in hand, buddy. Pull it on and let’s get to practice. That is, if you think you can fit your junk in the pouch!” He playfully punched Skye in the arm. The freshman had an impulse to punch Kirk in the face as a response, but he instantly realized it was just in fun. His experience did not include this kind of horsing around, but he was quickly picking up that it was the norm, given the behavior he observed in the locker room.
He pulled up the athletic supporter slightly awkwardly, adjusted the three-inch waistband and reshuffled his large ballsac as he had seen Kirk do. He reached down to put his briefs in the paper bag and Kirk said, “Hang on, buddy. Lemme help you” and he reached over the untwisted one of the leg straps that ran along the side of Skye’s muscled buttock. The touch sent a spark flying through Skye, but again he kept himself under control.
“C’mon, guys!” yelled one of the wrestlers. You just gonna stand there in your jocks all day? Coach wants us out there now!” Laughing, the guys started to file out. Kirk quickly pulled on his socks and wrestling shoes, and noticed that Skye reached in his bag again. “I think they also put shoes your size in your locker. Get ’em and let’s go.”
Skye, stunned, reached in and grabbed a pair of wrestling sneakers, the newest he’d ever had. Embarrassingly, he felt a tear starting to form in one eye little at this generosity and abundance, but he mastered himself and just pulled them on.
“Ready,” he said. And they headed to the wrestling mat.
