Take a Shower You Sweaty Bastards!

There’s a sacred locker room rule: shower before you soak. Some of you meatball marinaders never got the memo.

There’s a sacred, unspoken code in every men’s locker room. And some of you sweaty bastards are violating it in the worst possible way.

1.) We share the benches, so put a towel down first. No bare-assing it on the polyester.

2.) Eye contact is mandatory. In fact, it’s the only place in the world where we willingly practice eye contact. In the locker room, when you engage in conversation with a naked man, all eye contact is strictly kept above the chest level. And it’s business talk only.

3.) We pretend not to notice when someone is doing naked stretches.

4.) And above all else, above all else, we shower up before stepping into the communal hot tub.

But some of you, and you know exactly who you are, have decided this sacred rule doesn’t apply to you. You just waltz out of the sauna like a buttered-up rotisserie chicken, covered in a personal glaze of ass sweat and back hair oil, and cannonball straight into the hot tub. No rinse. No pause. No shame. No common courtesy.

You were just sweating your nuts off in a room hotter than the surface of the sun. Now you want to take a dip to rinse off.

Newsflash: I don’t want to stew in your sweat. I don’t want to marinate in the lingering drip of your hot yoga class. The hot tub isn’t a communal human fondue pot simmering sausage stew. I swear, it’s like watching a BP oil spill in real time, only instead of ruining marine ecosystems, you’re polluting the one place I go to relax my knees. You emerge from the steam room looking like a waxy corpse, and then immediately soak your bodily secretions into what was, just moments ago, a peaceful whirlpool of bubbles and escape.

You are the human version of “no thanks.”

It’s about common courtesy, people. It’s about basic hygiene. It’s not rocket science. You get hot, you sweat. Then, you shower. It’s a fundamental sequence of events, like “eat, then digest,” or “pay taxes, then cry.” The shower is there for a reason. It’s not just a decorative waterfall to enhance the locker room ambiance. It’s a vital, functional piece of equipment designed to remove the very fluids you’re currently bringing into our shared relaxation space.

Let’s be clear: the steam room is not a car wash. You don’t come out of there “clean.” You come out of there poached. Your pores are wide open. Your sweat glands are on overdrive. That sheen on your skin? That’s not moisture. That’s a broth you just made, it’s a protein-rich, funk-laced distillation of your last three meals and the 90 minute basketball sweat-fest.

I don’t want to stew in your sweat.

I don’t want to sit in your aura. I don’t want to share a space with your glistening thigh meat. You think because the hot tub has chlorine, it’s some magical baptismal font that forgives all hygiene sins. Buddy, chlorine isn’t holy water. It’s bleach, not a miracle worker. It’s barely hanging on against your taint bacteria.

Let’s talk common courtesy. You shower after your workout. You shower after the sauna. You don’t skip the rinse and take a victory lap in the hot tub like you just cured cancer. You didn’t. You just turned the whirlpool into

a gazpacho of swamp ass, sweaty scrot and instant regret.

What is this? A soup kitchen for crotch funk?

And don’t give me that look like I’m being uptight. I’m not asking you to get a full-body wax or exfoliate with Himalayan salt. I’m asking you to take 14 seconds and rinse the human gravy off your body before turning the hot tub into a communal sausage soup.

But until then, I’ll be the guy giving you the side-eye from across the hot tub. So, for the love of all that is clean and good, take a damn shower. Your fellow gym members, and their gag reflexes, will thank you.

So here’s a new sacred rule for the locker room:

So here’s the new sacred rule of the locker room, and it should be posted in every gym from here to Planet Fitness:

Don’t dip until you drip.

Got that? Shower before you soak.
Or pack your towel and go stew alone in your own sweaty soup pot.
Because until then?
You’re not just gross —
You’re a war criminal in flip-flops.