Locker Room Rubberneckers

I am a regular exercise enthusiast, and when I travel, I miss my regular work-out time at the gym. Add to the lack of physical activity the amount of food, in both volume and calories, that I have ingested over the holidays in the past two weeks, and that lack of exercise becomes more than just a missed routine. I was in Atlanta, visiting my sister, LM, and her family for Christmas, and she suggested that I join her for her water aerobics class. I do a variety of classes at my gym, but none of them is in the pool. LM is a good sport about going to exercise with me when she visits, so I figured I could return the favor. Plus I needed to move before the butter solidified in my blood stream.

I didn’t pack a swimsuit with me, but my sister had a whole collection of athletic suits designed to make everyone look fatter than they are. The swimsuit she gave me mashed my boobs flat, where they migrated to the armpit area, like water wings. The odd strap set-up in the back divided my fat into different sections, not unlike the Michelin man. It was not a pretty sight. I figured that I might not be the skinniest one in the pool, but I was probably going to be the youngest, so I got over myself and headed to LM’s gym with her.

We stowed our clothes in lockers and she put on her swim cap, which is covered in brightly colored floppy flowers, adding a festive touch to the class as well as a needed distraction from the unattractive bathing suits. We wandered into the pool area and joined the rest of the women and the one emasculated husband in the water. My friend JR used to take lil JR for swim lessons at our gym’s pool, and she referred to the water class participants as pool cows because of the way they sort of meander about in the swim lanes, bumping along clumsily, with their large black and white bathing suits. You can almost hear them gently lowing and mooing as they drift around. It might sound like a mean way to describe large women in a water class, but it’s the truth. LM’s exercise class had more than one pool cow in it, stepping about in the shoulder deep water like they were grazing in a meadow.

The teacher got in the water with us, and led us through a variety of moves designed to churn the water and our excess body fat into a human stew. We cross country skied and did modified jumping jacks and tucked ourselves into fat little eggs. We lunged and high stepped and resisted the water. After thirty minutes, the lone male left the class before his testes permanently sucked into his body cavity. The rest of us grabbed water weights and did the same routine, only this time with more resistance. Mind you, it was not an easy class. I could feel my arms burning while trying to hold those foam weights under the water’s surface, and it took great control not to hit myself in the face or cause a tidal wave.

The class ended, and not a moment too soon, as I had started to suffer chemical burns on my skin from all that chlorine. LM and I took showers and wrapped up in our towels before we headed back to the main locker room area. She and I discreetly dressed ourselves, more modest than perhaps many sisters would be in front of one another. Meanwhile, an older woman entered the locker room from the main gym floor, setting her stuff down on the same bench as our bags. She peeled off all her clothing and stood there all full Monty in front of us.

You could tell she was older, not just by her weathered skin, graying hair, or wrinkles, but by the full afro bush she sported between her legs. No modern woman walks around with that level of pubic hair, not in today’s youthful hairless culture, so it was a shock to witness it in person. It was a massive bush, and it was even thickly overgrown on her upper thighs like mutton chop sideburns. Her pussy looked like President Chester Arthur.

I know her bush looked like that because I stared at it openly, all shocked. If my daughters were with me and stared like that, I would have scolded them for being so obviously rude. But I had no one to scold me, not even my sister, who was all agog too. It was all we could do to not point at it. There we were, two grown women staring at another woman’s snatch like it was a house on fire or a car accident. We grabbed our bags and fled the locker room before that thatch of hair could spread and overtake us.

Now, I am not a fan of the smooth hairless look, which to me looks most natural on a child. Hair is what separates the ladies from the little girls. But tidying up down there seems like a courtesy to me, if not something I do for myself, than something that should be done for the comfort of others. I remember my third stepmother, Irene, who had pubic hair that started from her belly button and spread like wildfire almost down to her knees. Why do I know this? Because she took us to the pool all the time, and would lounge on a chair with all that hair on display where it creeped, and creep is the appropriate word here, out of her unflattering bikini bottoms.

It scared me then, and it still scares me. If you have to be courteous for your neighbors and trim your hedges, should you not do the same for your bush?