Naked Ambition

     The human body is a beautiful, dynamic thing. It can do just about anything. Sometimes its exposure is too much for bystanders.

     After working out, a hot shower feels amazing. It recharges you. One evening, after an intense cardio session, I headed back to my locker after my shower. I was wrapped in my towel getting ready to get dressed, when a lady who’d just had her own shower came walking through the locker area. She was completely naked except for the towel wrapped around her hair. Of all the areas of her that needed a towel, her hair could’ve gone without.

     I silently hoped that she would go to a different area of lockers. I didn’t hope hard enough because she stopped right at the locker next to mine. I proceeded to look forward while slipping on my underwear underneath my towel.

     “How’s it going today?” the nude woman asked.

     “Fine. Thank you,” I said still looking forward.

     She began to take the towel from her hair. The whole thing seemed odd to me. I have no problem with the female body, but I only want to see my own naked. Whether she was a supermodel or a sumo wrestler, I didn’t want to see her business. If it has been in a large steam room, that would’ve been something different entirely.

     “So what’s the weather like out there?”

     Not only was she immodest, but now she was engaging me in elevator chatter. Fantastic. She had now hiked her leg up on the carpeted bench under our row of lockers and began drying it with her towel. I wished my peripheral vision hadn’t worked that day. I now was looking away as I slipped on my jeans.

     “Not sure,” I said responding to her question. “I’ve been in the rec center.”

     She must have noticed my discomfort. The lady stopped drying her leg and put her hands on her hips.

     “What’s your problem?” she asked pointedly.

     I turned around and looked her square in the eye. I couldn’t look anywhere else.

     “I’m just trying to get dressed,” I replied.

     “I’m just being friendly and you’re being rude.”

     “No, I’m getting dressed and you’re asking me questions…naked.”

     “We’re all women. This is the women’s locker room.”

     “It is the women’s locker room,” I countered. “Not Orange Is the New Black.”

     She huffed off to another locker area. I continued getting dressed.

     Nudity has its time and place. The nude form of another needn’t be pushed on anyone. A naked body is the anatomy in its truest form. Sometimes, you aren’t in the mood for someone else’s truth.