On Being Naked

I have this thing about being naked. I don’t do it well. Instead, when I find myself without clothes at the gym or in the doctor’s office, I talk too much about how I didn’t shave, or what happened to my armpit boob, or why I’m not wearing a body stocking. As a result, I’m completely jealous of people who just walk around without a stitch on and are all “Oh this butt? Those are my kneecaps” about it.

And I don’t want to be mean, but I would prefer you not be naked ever in front of my eyes or especially in the sauna. I sit on those same benches and your butt residue is not on my list of substances to perch my own butt onto, if I had a choice in the matter.

I think maybe it was my roommate from 1991. She would stand in my bedroom door, all flesh and no clothes, and want to chat. Sometimes she’d grab her boobs and say something crass. I kept my eyes on the floor because I was fresh out of Catholic college and had no idea where to look. I mean, do I look at her boobs? That would be weird. But if I look at her face we both know she’s naked and the elephant in the room is she’s playing with her chest.

Or it could have been my college roommate. Our bathroom was misfortunately placed right across from my bedroom, so she’d sit on the pot and have entire conversations with me as the door hung open. Or I’d be putting my contacts in and she’d decide that was a good time to pee out the condom she thought she and her boyfriend had lost a week prior.

I don’t know who originated the naked fear in me, but it’s run deep. I don’t even get undressed in front of my friends. I barely do it in front of my kids. Or not since Booger told me my vagina looked pretty with all that “mascara” on it.

All this is to say that I was recently confronted with a naked person who was so unabashedly NAKED that I didn’t even know how to proceed with my not looking at her. I was, naturally, in the sauna, and in she walked. She probably clocked in at 75, which buys you the right to be naked all you want while accepting the fact that the relatively younger among you will sneak peeks at your melting flesh and curse their own disintegrating collagen barely holding their skin strands together in some semblance of relative tightness. When in reality, their butts are knee caps.

So I guess I saw my future. And perhaps that’s what bothered me most of all, or that she was so unapologetic about it. She didn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed! Or look down when I met her eyes. Or make excuses about not wearing a body stocking.

She was CONFIDENT.

That part really pissed me off.

Not to mention the butt residue.