PEOPLE I'D HURT: Man In Gym Shower.

Pause on this post. Actually, pause on this blog, just to be safe.


I'M RARELY MOVED TO VIOLENCE. It just doesn't seem to help much. If someone hits your girlfriend, and you like her, you'd better swing back, or move to another state. If someone hits you in front of your girlfriend, you'd better swing back, or get a new girlfriend who doesn't know your old girlfriend, which is another reason to move to another state. In those situations, fine. Otherwise, it seems to me like the only thing worse than being disrespected is being disrespected AND catching a black eye, or a lawsuit, or a knife in your head. But last week I met someone who I'd conceivably punch in a real way - not just if he was being held down, and Obama said I could, and I didn't think I'd break my wrist.

Now that excessive running has fucked my left foot up, I swim at Bally. If you don't shower immediately afterward, you will smell like old people for a day and a half, so I do so, in one of the eight stalls in the men's room. I always walk in murmuring "gooo corner shower... gooo corner shower...", hoping the one stall nobody can see into is available. It never is, and wasn't last week, when I noticed from my 'periphrerals', to quote The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the eyes of a middle-aged Asian man in the opposite shower repeatedly wandering in my direction. I understand we all zone out sometimes, and when we come to, we're staring at something we shouldn't be, like the time I almost got murdered on Melrose for staring at a carload of heavily armed 18th Street gangsters. But this guy's eyes would routinely dart away and return to check me out like a guy checks a girl out, except I'm a motherfucking man in the motherfucking shower.

What to do? Shout at him? He'll deny it, and you'll look crazy. Tell staff? You can't prove shit. Fight him? I'm not going to get into the logistics of having a naked standoff with another man in a public shower area. Suffice to say, it's a terrible, horrifically awful idea. But I haven't felt that close to punching someone in the face in a long time. It's actually good to know I can come up with that kind of rage, in case I take my future family camping one day and my unborn children should need protection from bears or other wild animals.

I ended up finishing my shower pressed up against the stall wall where he couldn't see me, like an action hero on the side of a building. This swordswallower is not gonna stop me from getting my Bally membership's worth; believe that. So it's not inconceivable that I will punch an old-ass man directly in the mouth sometime in the next couple of months. But I will definitely dry off and dress first. And wait until he does the same.

Um, Saints & Sinners tonight! 10899 Venice. Ten to two.