Life at the Y

"It's the first time I saw Arturo in clothes," said one of the morning loudmouths, jokingly, to a couple of guys sitting just outside the steam and sauna rooms on the white plastic bench that serves as a semi-uncomfortable (for me at least) lounge spot in the men's locker room at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA. There's a crazy amalgam of regulars; it brings back high school - the institutional feel of it and the absolute mix, about as egalitarian as our modern democracy offers nowadays (struck up a brief conversation with who I guessed is some type of venture capitalist ("I'm flying to Austin at the end of the week"); he was characteristically wary in his responses to my enthusiastic talking (I saw basketball shoes and a basketball in his locker and I was quizzing him on the pick-up game situation (for the info, he could've been homeless for all I care), as some "successful" guys are). The curiously-shaped guy that sits directly in front of the hot tub so you have to curve around his feet, one of which (his left) is elephant-man deformed, a couple of nobs are all there are for toes. A big belly, shorts that somehow hug his big belly, shirtless, and calling out to his regulars when he sees them, "Hey now." (Saw him riding his motor scooter in a different part today). Another guy talks to everybody; I was unfortunate enough to match his flow. Heard him loudmouthing a guy at a neighboring locker as he changed into his swim trunks, yelling at the guys as we passed through the sauna/steam room area to the showers, giggling to himself and others in the shower (soap shower required by state law before getting into hot tub, pool), and then jabbering with the elephant man in the hot tub ... and then yelling to the lifeguard and to his lane-neighbors in the pool. A one-man show.

Anyhow, I had never seen Arturo in clothes either; he's a shuffling, mumbling older hispanic guy with a snow's-spit moustache and a nickel-sized medallion that swings, bounces from clavicle to clavicle just behind the beat of his shuffle; and he's always in the locker room. I had never not seen him actually, and I go at random times during the day.

Okay ... more later. This one is ripe.