Cleanliness Is Next to ... Exhibitionism?
I know everyone's different—you only have to go into a lingerie department and see a size 42 DD lacy pink silk bra looking down its snouts at the 32 A cotton one across from it to understand that. But sometimes it can still be startling to notice the differences in human behavior. When I shower in the locker room at a gym, for instance, I like to maintain a modicum of privacy. I would say, in fact, that closing the little curtain on your shower stall is probably the norm among women. This is not to imply, however, that the woman who routinely stands just outside her shower stall, facing out and vigorously soaping up her pudenda is not normal. It's just that, well, this action being outside the norm and all, I'm not entirely sure how to react. Do I modestly look away? Or pull up a chair and watch?
No doubt, she is merely more evolved than I am and the proper response is simply to nod and say hello. But when everyone else is discreetly showering behind a little curtain and she is standing well outside ( literally and figuratively ) the shower stall, bending low over an outstretched leg to shave it, it simply doesn't seem like your standard social setting. It's akin to when I'm at the gynecologist's with my feet in the stirrups, her hand inside me halfway up to my navel, and she wants to chat about the latest books we've read or how my job is going—it just feels a little, uh, awkward given that usually when I'm schmoozing I have a drink in my hand and shoes on my feet—and they're not in stirrups at the time ( unless I'm at one of the all-too-frequent horseback-riding parties to which I go ) .
I am not the only one confused by her shower-room behavior, either. One morning, she happened to be in—er, using—the shower stall next to mine. When she walked across the shower room to the opposite wall to retrieve something or other out of her bag, another patron asked whether she was done with that shower, since no others were currently available. 'Oh, no,' she said, 'I'm actually just in the middle.' Worse still, for me, at least, I just happened to turn that direction, toward the gap between shower curtain and wall, at the instant she was bent at the waist over her bag. 'My eyes! My eyes!' I wanted to cry out. Not that it was anything I hadn't seen before or that it was an inherently unpleasant sight, but my god, it was eight in the morning, I'd had no coffee, and I don't even know this woman's name. It was like being a peeping tom in reverse.
That we have decidedly different ideas of personal boundaries, this woman and me, was confirmed—if all of the latter were not confirmation enough—when my partner Kathy, who also frequents this gym/pool, told me she'd seen this woman blow drying her hair, then in one unselfconscious movement, swing the blow drier down to flush the warm air over her nether parts. I dunno—could be that's an effective way to prevent chafing. But so is smearing yourself with bear fat, and I almost never do that with an audience.
Clearly, I am not comfortable with this woman's level of comfort. To make matters yet more dicey, there's some chance she and I will end up at a meeting together or in some other way cross paths since the gym we go to is at the university where I work and where she likely has some affiliation as well. If that should occur, I only hope that I don't misspeak—as my mother once did on seeing, in street clothes, one of the deputies at the Milwaukee County Jail where she worked—and say, 'Oh, hi. I didn't recognize you with your clothes on.' Though in my case, of course, it would literally be true. More likely, she will look so unfamiliar without a soapy lather on expanses of exposed skin that we will pass one another without notice. Or so I reassure myself before attaching my towel like a tourniquet to my torso and stepping out from behind the shower curtain.
© 2005 by Yvonne Zipter. E-mail yvonne@yvonnezipter.com or see her Web site at www.yvonnezipter.com .