Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Towels

I thought that I was probably done having embarrassing things happen in a locker room.

I know. I was delusional.

But really. Surely I've met my quota by now. Surely it's someone else's turn to humiliate himself while naked in a room for naked people.

But no.

I haven't told Skylar what happened last week. I haven't told anyone what happened last week. I almost announced it at family dinner a few hours after it all went down. We were eating with Skylar's sisters and their children in Portland. But then I remembered that I couldn't tell Skylar this because then he would yell some form of "THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO BACK IN THERE." And I haven't let Skylar be right about anything ever so I don't want to start now.

He had told me he didn't want me to go back into the locker room that morning because we were under some kind of deadline for meeting Skylar's family to go shopping. I had brought a change of clothes to the gym and he had not, so he suggested (but in a voice that sounded more like a command) that I not shower at the gym, but instead head back over to the house and shower there, that way he wouldn't have to sit and wait for me.


But I wasn't willing to agree to this for two reasons: 1. Because I get at least 1,000 times more sweaty than Skylar at the gym, so riding home in the car in that amount of filth is something that I won't attempt and he can't understand, and 2. I'm a stubborn person who is nearly impossible to love but I currently house and feed Skylar so he is enslaved to me and has no option but to stay and endure the misery, and since he can't go anywhere, my selfishness is reinforced and basically this is a very healthy relationship that you should all envy.

So I told him that, no, I would not get in the car without showering and changing and would instead shower and change at the gym while he waited for me and thought about how lucky he is to have me.

He rolled his eyes, but then gave up the argument.

I guess I felt a little guilty, and I've been reading about this thing where you consider another person's needs and then try to behave in a way to account for those needs, so I decided I should try to hurry so he wouldn't have to wait for long.

This must have been why everything that then happened went down. I was in a hurry. I was distracted. I was also multitasking because as I was showering, I was rehearsing in my mind how I was going to win an argument with Skylar in the car about why my showering at the gym was the right choice.

The gym had four shower stalls; one other, besides my own, was occupied. I didn't know who was in there, but I noticed a green towel hanging on the hook just outside of it.

I showered, and then retrieved my own towel from its hook, also green, dried off, and walked back to my locker.

Things were going just fine. There were a few other people in the locker room. We all minded our own business. No one was talking.

Until.

Until I heard a man yell "WHERE'S MY GREEN TOWEL?"

This was one of those moments where my brain heard the words that had been said, but it didn't process them. Like, "where's my green towel" entered my mind, but then just sort of sat there, without registering.

The man yelled the query a few more times to a silent locker room.

Then, suddenly, I saw him out of the corner of my eye. There he stood, over 75 years old, shivering, soaking wet, a large tattoo that said "MARINE" across his chest, completely naked, holding a bright pink shower loofah in his right hand, and staring at me.

The following things then happened in the following order:

1. The man asked me to give him back his towel.

2. I told him I did not have his towel.

3. I looked down and saw two green towels, which I had shoved halfway into my gym bag without noticing that there were two.

4. The man pointed at the two towels and said that one of those was his.

5. It wasn't a lie. I wasn't lying. I truly did not think I had taken his towel. How would I have ended up with both of them? It would have been one thing if I had grabbed his and left mine on the hook, simply confusing the two. But I clearly had both of them. And so I pointed at these and said "SOMEONE MUST HAVE FRAMED ME!"

6. Everyone was now watching us, me, the lying-conspiracy-theorist-thief, and my accuser, a very naked senior citizen. And they were all evaluating the merit of my argument that some stranger had stolen this man's towel and then stuffed it into my bag without me noticing.

7. A man with an arm cast who had been just sitting in the locker room seemingly with no purpose then yelled, "nobody framed him! I saw him come out of the shower area with two towels!"

8. I said that cast man was "lying," and my voice was a few octaves higher than normal.

9. Another man joined cast man, witnessing for the locker room throngs that he also saw me come out of the shower area with two towels, one wrapped around me, and the other in my hand.

10. This second witness also said that I had a "SMIRK" on my face when I did it, I suppose to paint a picture that I had done this intentionally.

I FOR SURE did not do this intentionally. I'm still not even totally convinced that I did it at all, but the second witness was wearing a very fancy watch so I kind of wanted to trust him.

The naked man was still standing there, absorbing all of the fruits of his investigation. I realized that it now looked like I was a punk kid trying to torture an elderly man who fought for our country at some point, by stealing his towel so he would have to get dressed wet, in a "and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you nosy kids and your dog" kind of way.

And I realized that it didn't really matter whether I had in fact done the thing. Perception is reality. And all of those people in the locker room believed that this was the reality.

So I course corrected. I course over-corrected. Without thinking at all, I grabbed both towels, in a wad, and hurled them at this man.

This senior citizen.

WHO FOUGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY.

And in so doing, I failed to realized that my disgusting, sweaty, 1,000 times more than Skylar, soiled gym clothes were included in that two-towel wad, which hit the elderly man square in his marine-tattooed chest.

He caught half of it, as the rest, one of the towels and my shorts, fell to his feet.

"Dude," I heard the cast man say.

"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to do any of this!" I tried to explain to everyone that I was just trying to give him his towel back and he could even have my own to make up for it and that I must have done all of this on accident because I was being rushed by someone waiting for me outside and it was really kind of his fault.

The naked man shook his own towel out, releasing the remainder of my gym clothes, and then he walked to his own locker.

I quickly grabbed the wad of towel and clothes that was now on the floor, stuffed it all in my bag, and got the hell out of there.

I was so distracted by the embarrassment that I didn't remember to beat Skylar in an argument on the way back to the house.

I had nearly forgotten about the whole thing by the next morning when I opened the gym back to empty it out.

I dumped the pile of towel and clothes onto the floor and watched as a pink loofah rolled out of it.

~It Just Gets Stranger

18 comments:

  1. It's stories like these that give me an extra ounce of anxiety in public restrooms/showers.

    Also, one could argue that your towel mishap was Skylar's fault since his annoyance caused you to be caught up in his attitude and not enough focus on the task at hand of drying off with one towel and not two.

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    1. Yeah! It's all Skylar's fault! Lock him up! Lock him up!

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  2. I'm now convinced everything in this blog is fiction and you are just a very gifted novelist (well, novellaist, because length), because there is no way this could have happened in real life.

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  3. Oh, Eli, honey!

    (Please keep writing and entertaining me.)

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  4. You make me feel like it's ok to be me with all my brain fog accidents and mishaps. Thanks, Eli. We are all sitting here thinking how lucky we are to have you. YOU HAVE TO SHARE, SKYLAR.

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  5. Honestly, the locker room stories just keep getting better and better. If I were you I would never go near one again. But PLEASE do, because I need the entertainment.

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  6. Okay, are any other women so shocked that someone would stand and have a whole conversation NAKED in the locker room?? Women's locker rooms are much less comfortable with nakedness. We generally try to quickly change our shirts using that trick we all learned in 7th grade where you put your arms through your new shirt while still wearing your old shirt around your shoulders/boobs and then quickly pulling the old shirt over your head and seamlessly putting the new shirt on. We also often hold towels up for each other to change behind.

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    1. I agree with you that this is often the attitude in American women's locker rooms, but why???!!! What do we have to feel ashamed about? Women need to support women and not be ashamed of themselves around other women.

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    2. I'm going to disagree. When I'm in locker rooms, the older women seem very comfortable with being naked for periods of time much longer than one might expect. And I just change. I kind of assume no one cares what I look like. I definitely don't hold conversations, but I don't do that shirt thing you described. Do you live in Utah? Is that a Utah thing? (Possibly I'm making a terrible assumption.)

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    3. But you have heard of/seen the shirt thing! :) And for what it is worth, I live in CA but am Mormon. Maybe its a mormon body shaming thing? I actually avoid changing in public as much as I can and generally use a stall. But I strive to one day be confident enough to just go for it and change in front of others! And of note, I recently had a baby and that has DEFINITELY changed my shyness around people seeing my boobs and/or nakedness :)

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    4. Oh, definitely know the shirt thing. I've definitely done the shirt thing. I just don’t employ it in the locker room. I did when I was in high school, but the older I get, the less I care. I’ve had four kids, and so many people have seen so much of me from the actual birthing and then just breastfeeding in random places that I’m kind of over it. I’ve decided that bodies are just bodies. I can’t control what others think. I also have lived overseas with such varying degrees of covering up or not that it has altered my opinions.

      (I also am LDS but not of Utah.)

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    5. I have thought more about this than the topic probably actually warrants, but isn't that part of what we come to this blog for? NOT THAT WE KNOW WHAT BLOGS ARE, CATHY. Wait, what was I saying? I also used to be very timid about my body, and then also went through the experience of childbirth and nursing and especially with my last baby when things were happening and I was so out of it and everything was so intense and insane and it took me about two days to finally figure some things out and ask a nurse if that hallway we had gone down had been a public access hallway, and so the point is I don't know who in Lincoln has seen what of me, but it was all out there and so graphic that there isn't even a rating for it in this country. ANYWAY, that said I am less timid about my body now in general but I still get anxious being full naked in public places (where it's acceptable! like locker rooms!) and I think it's because of a feeling of vulnerability. What if there is a fire, or a bomb threat, or whatever and I have to leave the building immediately but I'm not in a position to do so (and in the weather we have in Nebraska most of the year, you really really really do want to be covered up when you go outside. It's a real thing.) So even when I am changing in a stall in the bathroom for whatever reason, I still always do it as quickly as I can. I haven't done the shirt or underwear trick in a long time though, I will have to teach that to my girls soon! It's a really useful life skill, just for whenever life happens and you need a skill set... like that.

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    6. American men haven't been body shamed nearly as much as American women, so they don't have the same level of unreasonable shame, embarrassment, and doubt when it comes to being naked in locker rooms.

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  7. My husband has a tendency of telling me what time we have to leave and then expecting me to leave a half hour before that time. We've been married 18 years and I'm just finally planning on leaving a half hour before he tells me to do so. Prior to this I would rush to put together whatever I needed to take that hadn't yet been packed and inevitably forgot things. It's always been his fault. It will always be his fault.

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  8. Alright, so this in no way, shape or form compares with the embarrassment that would come with the situation described in the article, but it reminds me of an experience that I had in high school.

    I was on the girls swim team at one high school for my freshman, sophomore and junior years. All of the girls were extremely casual about nudity in the locker room. Everyone always showered in the nude in the open communal showers in the girls locker room after practices and swim meets.

    Just before my senior year of high school my family moved to a different house in the same city. My parents petitioned to allow me to spend my senior year at the same high school that I had been attending. But the morons from the board of education said that I had to attend the high school that was nearest to our new house, which was a rival of my original high school. I'm still bitter about that decision to this day!!!

    So my high school for my senior year was in the same school district and was only about 4 miles away from my original high school. I was on the swim team at my new school too. After the first team practice at my new school I went into the girls locker room, took off my swimsuit and hung it on a hook and headed into the shower room with my body wash and shampoo. There were a few of my new teammates already in the showers, but they were wearing swimsuits. Right away I noticed that they looked at me kind of strangely but no one said anything. Several more of my teammates walked into the shower room all wearing swimsuits.

    I wasn't mortified or anything, it wasn't really that big of a deal to me. But it was a little awkward. So when we were getting dressed after rinsing off in the showers I quietly told my teammate Kimberly that everyone showered nude after practices at my old school and that I hope that I didn't freak everyone out by me being naked in the showers.
    Kimberly said that it wasn't a problem that we were all girls and that there was no reason for anyone to have a problem with it. She even said that she thought that I was being more mature than any of the other girls on the team including herself. She said that she always felt stupid showering in a swimsuit and would have preferred to shower nude, but that she didn't want to be the only naked in the showers.

    So the next day I almost decided to wear my swimsuit into the showers, but I decided that since no one freaked out the day before that I would just brave it and continue to shower nude.

    So a minute after I walked into the showers in the nude, Kimberly walked into the showers in the nude also.

    A minute later our teammate Julie looked at everyone else and asked "Why do we wear our swimsuits in the shower? It's kind of silly!" So Julie then took off her swimsuit to finish her shower.

    After our next practice all but one of our teammates showered in the nude. That one girl then showered nude after our next practice.

    So I guess that I was a bit of a pioneer?

    I've noticed a similar situation at health clubs in my area. At one health club that I was a member of almost everyone seemed to avoid being seen in the nude. Women would be contortionists while trying to dry off after a shower and get dressed without showing any skin. That gym didn't have a pool, so when my membership expired I joined a health club that had a pool.At the new health club it was a total 180, almost no one had any issues with showering (The locker room only had two shower stalls, the rest were all out in the open like schools have)or walking around nude. I think that it's probably a similar situation? I think that most women wouldn't mind being nude in locker rooms as long as most of the other women are as well?


    Kelly.

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