SPEAKING OF SHOWERS

Some of it, no doubt, goes back to our personal histories: For lots of us, the changing room was the first place we could ogle naked guys. Getting into and out of sports gear can be a brief, hurried process, good for just a glimpse, but the leisurely pace of the shower room - with its acres of damp, exposed flesh - is like proto-porn in a white-tiled room. Small wonder that the thought of running water gets many queer men hot.

The shiny exhibitionism of shower-room porn is tempered by a casual offhandedness. After all, showering is something we all do. The wet boy in the picture isn't really posing for porn; he's just innocently taking a shower while we voyeuristic masturbators intrude on his private ritual. It's a fantasy as hot and wet as the water spurting from the showerhead.

Meanwhile, back in real life, showering can form a delightful, damp prelude to a lust-drenched scene. "I remember," says one man, "when my trick came over directly from work. He was a manual labourer, and he arrived dirty and stinky. I loved sitting there in the bathroom as he stripped off his clothes, then watching him through the semitransparent shower curtain as he got himself clean enough to have sex with me."

And after sex? There's the ever-popular post-fuck mutual back scrub - two men in a tub rub-a-dub-dubbing each other, spreading suds on slick skin, along shafts, and into nooks and crannies. Two-man cleanups can get so heated they lead straight into a wet Round 2 - nonsloppy seconds. Screwing beneath a pounding jet of hot water has a certain tropical charm not easily reproduced between the sheets; it's the kind of primal scene that can make a guy grateful that soap was invented. And if, amidst all the aquatic antics, another fluid starts to flow ... well, at least it all goes directly down the drain.

Sometimes porn fantasy and plain old reality can happily converge. "I was at the Y," recalls a horny gym-goer, "when I spotted the hottest fellow taking a shower a couple of nozzles down. He was looking at me, soaping up his crotch and getting hard. It was late and there was no one else around, so I turned off my shower, moved down next to him, and ended up slipping a couple of soapy fingers inside his butt while we both shot off into the flowing water." Sounds romantic, but gym bunnies beware - a stroked member can result in a yanked membership.

Feeling dirty? Whether beneath a waterfall or under a shower massage, in a porn flick or in the locker room, running water has a liquid sexiness. It gets you hard while it gets you clean. And it's safe sex: The worst that can happen is pruning up from staying in the stream too long. So let's get wet!

Simon Sheppard

San Francisco artist and activist Simon Sheppard is best known for his contributions to the erotic literary scene. He wrote hundreds of stories that appeared in S/M magazines; erotic anthologies; and over twenty editions of Best Gay Erotica and Best American Erotica. His Sextalk column has appeared on OutUK for more than 20 years. You can find out more about Simon Sheppard in this OutUK feature and tribute, or take a look at some of his many books that are still available:

       

Looking for something very sexy and just as smart? Man on Man collects the best and hottest gay sex writing by Simon, who is also co-editor of Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power as well as a collection of gay erotica called Hotter Than Hell.

In KINKORAMA : Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion he takes readers behind the unmarked doors and black vinyl curtains that lead to the sometimes shocking, often hilarious, relentlessly arousing scenarios of extreme sex. There are also stories of bears in Tales from the Bear Cult: Beat Bear Stories from the Best Magazines.