Lately, I have been out of town and have been going to L.A. Fitness for my workouts. The experience there has got me thinking about how the locker room experience has changed since I started going to the gym years ago. This experience was such an individualized experience. Although there were lots of guys in the locker room, I saw one penis, apart from my own. Everybody went to individualized showers either covered with a towel or with underwear on. They dressed in the shower, or one awkwardly put his tight boxer shorts on while he had a towel around his waist. I never talked to anyone, something I always do in the showers at the gym where I normally go. The loss that I suspect that we experience in such settings is the loss of male, communal, sexual energy that comes from guys being together in their rawness. Now I know that there have been problems with that energy, including misuse of women, or even gang rape. But I have often found that when I come home from an experience with men in their rawness I am really ready for sex, not with the men, frankly, but with my wife or myself. Also, I realize that I learned a lot about my male genitalia because of the rawer, communal locker room experience. It was the locker room where I learned about circumcision. I didn't know that some men weren't circumcised. And lately, the open experience helped me understand pubic shaving. I know there are reasons for this new approach to the locker room. But I think it brings a significant loss for men and male identity.