Stranger Danger

I went swimming today at the local pool. On the whole, it was fine, cleaner than the pools in China, and, it goes without saying, more organised in terms of swimming lanes and etiquette.

The thing that intrigued me was the way in which changing rooms have been re-designed. In China and Korea, there’s a strict gender divide, which is the same as I was used to in England when I was growing up and using sporting facilities regularly. In this traditional design, the changing area is open with lockers lining the walls, communal showers (or baths in Korea) the norm. Now, in England, seemingly in response to the two twin English obsessions of fear of nudity and paedophiles, the changing room has been radically altered.

Gender separation is a thing of the past; now both sexes share the same changing area. A strange move you might think, as I did, until upon entering the facility, I noticed that there is now a series of small cubicles, with the occasional larger one for family groups. So what has been achieved is a greater compartmentalised visibility.

The immediately horrifying thing for me was that everyone kept their shoes on. I’ve really struggled with this since coming back; when I first arrived back home I felt a little bit sick when both my parents traipsed into the house wearing their shoes. It seemed inhuman, but not wishing to appear any more weird than they already think me, I followed suit. So in the changing room, what with it being damp weather, the floors had a dirty, watery, muddy tinge to them.

The other thing of note was how the changing room was packed out with big-boned mothers fussing over their children. In the past, unless the children were really young, they were left to get on with things themselves (as still happens in Korea and China).

Naturally, as a lone older looking male, I was immediately identified as a potential paedophile. Even if I was not, I suspect they suspected that I secretly haboured desires to kidnap and have sex with their children even if I myself was presently unaware of my longings. Why else would I be in a swimming pool changing room for God’s sake?

I battled past the looks of disgust and tightly clutched children and entered one of the micro-cubicles to get undressed. I’ve never been one to have much of an issue about nudity, and this has only lessened since being in Korea and being a bathhouse regular, so the whole thing seemed patently absurd. As I struggled to maneuver in my repressed cubicle, I noticed that there were bars on the top, so I was, in fact, in a cage. This presumably, is to prevent prowling, agile paedophiles from going about their grubby business in a vertical fashion.

I stowed my possessions in a locker, and tried to make myself as invisible as a semi-naked man who bears a figurative giant arrow with ‘PAEDOPHILE’ written on it could. The portly mothers glared at me as I rushed past desperately trying to make out that I hadn’t seen their children and even if I had I wasn’t interested, honest. But they knew, oh they knew alright. They had read it it the Daily Mail, all about my sort – lone men going to swimming pools – what possible reason could they have for going to a swimming pool? They make me fucking sick. They should be strung up by their balls – but those sick fucks would probably like that, wouldn’t they? Eh?

After an extremely enjoyable swim, I reluctantly reentered the danger zone. A heavily tattooed man glared at me as I entered the changing room, I suspect because he thought I was checking out his obese partner who was similarly tattooed and revolting. It was a situation where I felt like defending myself: ‘look mate, she’s dog rough, I can assure you I most certainly was not checking her out. In fact I wish my eyes had never been cursed with that ghastly aberration. Okay? You cool with that?’ I decided against this particular course of action and headed towards the sacred mothers of protection, who sensing my foul, child-sex crazed presence, had covered up their little princes and princesses before I could so much as dribble a lustful glance in their sainted direction.

Head now firmly bowed, I collected my towel and shower products from my locker. I felt thoroughly ashamed at my assumed intentions, but I needed to have a shower before I left. In my haste to escape the accusing eyes of the disgusted mothers, I had failed to notice where the showers were. I dared not ask anyone as they would probably think I was planning to grab a child and do something unspeakable with them in the showers, so I had to find them myself.

Like everything else in this bewildering changing room, the showers were housed individually in cubicles. It took me a little while to locate them as just couldn’t fathom out where they were as they looked the same as the changing cubicles. This extended walking around made me seem – as if further evidence were needed – that I was indeed a repugnant lone paedophile wolf on the prowl for some tasty child based action.

Having found them (the showers), I locked myself in securely. Next door, I heard the the tattooed moron and his frowzy hippo having a joint shower. I could hear their awful Leicester accents through the cubicle partition. I wished for deafness. But the anticipated pain came as expected: heavy petting – which as I recall was strictly prohibited upon entrance to swimming pools.

I moved quickly but I kept hearing sounds I didn’t want to hear. I finished up in record time and virtually sprinted from the shower cubicle, much to the shock of the protective mothers, who assumed I was attempted some sort of bird of prey maneuver upon their young, back to the minuscule anti-paedo cage cubicles. After getting changed in lightening speed, I exited the changing room quickly, shamefaced.

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