March 9th, 1996
NUDITY
Two years ago, I saw more naked women than I had ever seen before in my life.
In high school, the showers were unofficially designated the smoking section of the locker room. Once, as an experiment, a few girls on the track team tried turning on the water in the showers. With a gurgle and splurt, out shot a wad of rusty sludge that had been backed up in the pipes since the 1960s.
Then I spent two years at a Southern university where sexual repression and eating disorders reigned supreme—a combo guaranteed to make every girl keep her panties on in the locker room before and after step aerobics.
Not until I transferred to Columbia was I introduced to the wonderful world of locker room nudity. Like the woman who would stand in front of the mirror, meticulously applying her makeup wearing nothing but her flesh-colored knee highs.
So I was 21 years old, a junior in college when I learned that not all nipples are created equal. U to that point, I’d never had the opportunity to check out any but my own for more than the mili-moment it takes to slip on a T-shirt. One afternoon in the CU locker room provided enough nipple exposure to dispel any myth that mine were “normal.”
I am modest, but not neurotically so. There are a few seconds in my changing routine during which my breasts and what-have-you are exposed to the harsh fluorescent locker room light. But I don’t engage in conversation with my locker neighbor until my breasts are back into the sportsbra where they belong. I am not ashamed of my breasts or any other part of my body, I just want to spare my gym buddy the awkwardness and embarrassment of having to hold a perfectly normal conversation while showing the world my yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Is there any feat greater than bumping into an authority figure buck nekkid in the locker room? I dare say not. Once you’ve seen someone naked, it changes everything. YOU’VE SEEN HER NAKED. Everything about themselves that they want to cover up, to exercise into firmness to liposuck away, BAM! It’s all right in front of you. There’s no airbrush in real life.
I once literally bumped into my harshest professor…
NUDITY
Suction cup nipples, tic-tac nipples, shirt-button nipples, red, rosy and chocolate nipples.
There was a woman whose body amazed me. A swimmer, she would stand completely nude in front of a full length mirror and slowly detangle her long black hair. The picture of calm and serenity among a buzz of tossed towels, slamming lockers and sweaty imperfect flesh. Locker room Venus.
I saw her during finals once, in baggy sweats and a huge Ecuadorian wool sweater, hair stuffed under a baseball cap…
