At the end of a depressing week of bad news, I thought I would offer up a change of pace….

Every man has his story about his midlife transition to Speedos. Some hide behind the foil that they have no choice – an excuse like their surf club makes them do it. For others it follows the frustration of trying to select a pair of board shorts that don’t come down to your ankles or are covered in a design that looks like a pub carpet or a wall of graffiti.

For me it was a moment of being faced with a terrible choice: nudity or Speedos. Having driven 40 minutes to go for a swim but arriving and discovering I had forgotten to bring my $4 op-shop boardies, my first thought was to sit this one out.

I had a serious accident earlier in the year and took up squad swimming as part of my recovery. I also decided, having woken up in a hospital alive, I would do things a lot differently. However, not Speedo different, and so for my first few swim sessions I stubbornly had worn my palm-tree-covered long togs.

At first I retreated to the bleachers and sat there watching the other men and women do their laps, thinking I was a ridiculous excuse for a grown-up. Then in a huff of self-revelation I threw aside my last memory of wearing budgie smugglers, some time back in primary school. (It had been an ignoble day because I got dakked as I waited to launch myself into 50 metres of backstroke at a swim carnival). I walked up to the pool shop. ”Got any Speedos?”

”Sorry, love, only kids’ ones,” the woman behind the counter said. ”Ask Rhett [my swim coach]. He sometimes has spares.”

Rhett led me to a cardboard box in a back room and pulled out a stretched, threadbare piece of material that looked like it should have long ago been relegated to a rag bin. ”One of the local old fellas left these here,” Rhett said. ”You can borrow them if you want.”

My first impression was that they were more loincloth than cossies.

I took them back to the change room, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and put them on. They were particularly stretched at the front and so there was enough room to smuggle a shop full of budgies. At the back they were worn so thin I might as well have grabbed a leaf from one of the trees outside the pool complex and worn that instead.

Still, there was no going back now. I wrapped a towel around my waist, walked out to the pool, waited until the other swimmers were down the other end, tossed my towel and quickly bombed into the water, hanging on to my borrowed triangle of cloth so that it didn’t end up round my neck, and started swimming.

A strange thing happened at that moment. Even in someone else’s discarded Speedos, after 41 years of life I finally stepped into my own skin. I realised what I had been missing all these years of lugging around kilograms of wet shorts just so no one could get a peep at my privates.

A few days later I bought my own Speedos and felt a small wave of panic at how tiny and snug my new pair really were. That night after my wife had finished dinner I walked into the lounge room to parade my purchase. She spluttered with hilarity and my daughters looked on in complete shock.

”It’s so small,” my wife said. I hoped she was referring to my new swimmers.

When my 15-year-old son saw me he told me I was disgusting and embarrassing. ”Why would you wear them? You might as well wear nothing,” he said looking steadfastly at my face, as if his head was in a neck brace and was unable to look down below my shoulders.

At first I promised myself the Speedos would be seen in public only at squad training. But now I wear them at the beach, at people’s pools, on people’s boats, and I have to restrain myself from wearing them around the house. I am catching up on 30 years of lost Speedo time.

I even checked out the Speedo website but it caused me some pause as I looked at the buff male models with their waxed and tanned chests. My delusion was at risk of being shattered and so I clicked the page closed.

Now I have a theory. About the same age that a man starts to drink light milk and buy moisturiser and hand cream (another story) he also starts to consider the possibilities of breaking out of his fashion straitjackets.

He ceases to care whether he has a budgie or a cockatoo down his pants and he matures into the smart swimwear choice.

So don’t be bashful. Ignore your children. The real men in our age cohort know a secret: the transition to Speedos is a call of nature and cannot be ignored. When your time comes you will have no choice.

This Story first published Sydney Morning Herald 18/12/09