(no subject)
“Shower Scene”
It’s cold outside.
It’s cold inside.
I crawl deeper into my sleeping bag, burrowing myself until my toes reach the bottom. I begin to feel two new mosquito bites on my right thigh. I’d scratch them, but it’s no use scratching bug bites before dawn.
I poke my head out of the top and immediately my hair floods into my eyes, nose and mouth. Beneath the strands of frizzy purple and redness, my eyes lazily wander around the room.
Nona’s gone.
She told me last night at the Hall that she had early morning asanas- camp chores. Hannah and Laura are still sleeping, wide mouthed and limbs displaced. Laura’s flashlight is still on, attracting hundreds of insects in the predawn light. I yawn twice and stretch. The bell should be sounding soon.
I glance downwards.
The wooden planks with small cracks between them look dreadfully unappealing this morning. And cold. I think I can see moss beneath the cabin floor, a stubborn green carpet growing beneath the cheap, but masterfully nailed floorboards.
The morning bell bellows faintly across the lake through the thick, foggy morning air. Silently, I count each ring in my head.
Ding-Dong.
One bell.
Ding-Dong.
Two bell.
Ding-Dong.
Three bell.
It’s time to get up.
Resolutely, I sit up and smack my hair away from my face. No matter what I do it refuses to be disciplined. When I was younger my hair used to hang like smooth, black curtains on the center of my back. But as I got older, those smooth follicles that I treasured as a little girl became kinkier and impossible to straighten. Instead of getting some kind of modernized conk like my friends, I decided to abuse my hair constructively- by dying it unnatural colors and chopping at it with razor blades.
I count to three.
1…2…
I quickly rip off the sleeping bag and leap out of my bunk. The cabin shakes a little bit with the sudden intrusion. The floor boards are freezing. The wind coming from the lake whips around me, making my eyes tear. My sleep clouded eyes, made even more blurry by the intrusive wind, make out my bright red “Coca Cola” towel and the family toiletries. I wrap the shampoo and conditioner in my towel, and in bare feet I gingerly step off of the cabin steps. Grudgingly, I climb upwards to the wooden shack. I hear the familiar sound of water cascading onto another floor of wooden planks. Soft dirt spills over my feet.
Someone is already up.
This leaves me with a dilemma; I don’t like showering with other people. I haven’t had to shower with anyone since Hannah and I were five, much prior to the uncomfortable changes that puberty has wracked onto my helpless and juvenile body. Now tiptoeing, as though whoever was inside would be as uncomfortable with my presence outside as I am of theirs. I carefully climb the small, steep embankment leading up to the small wooden shack. The spinner nailed haphazardly onto the communal shower house door reads “Woman showering, anyone welcome.” I wait for a moment, towel still in hand, deliberating.
If it’s just a woman in there… Well, it’s not like I don’t have anything she’s never seen before…It’s just like in the gym locker room…
But I know this was nothing like the gym locker room. In the locker room at school girls hide behind shower curtains or bathroom stalls. In the locker room girls hide their most private parts. They veil their mosquito bitten breasts and their adolescent vulvae under thick barricades of cotton and elastic. You aren’t allowed to look at the other girls, even if you are talking to them. If you look at the other girls, even if they are mostly dressed, you are called a ‘lesbo’. A lesbo was a dyke, a girl who wanted to do dirty things to other girls. A lesbo was not your friend, but a pariah of the middle school caste system.
Standing outside- listening to the sacred bathing ritual of another woman, where she is at her most alluring and most vulnerable, hair slicked back and eyelashes dark; eyes closed and completely exposed- I trembled. I knew there would be no elastic or cotton in the shower room.
There would be only flesh.
My flesh. Her flesh. My Flesh; against water; against wood; against water; against Her flesh. More intimate than touch, the water running in small pools down to our feet and then intermingling, like the Amazon and the Rio Negro, her blue river water converging with my black-brown tea water like cream into coffee.
I take a deep breath and push open the door. I make sure to quickly avert my eyes to the plain wooden planks of the shower floor. I cannot bear to see who is standing before me, not yet.
The shower house is made up of one divider in a 3 walled room, opened and wide mouthed like a smile. Like a woman with her legs spread open. This openness is the pinnacle of camp, and showering together is supposed to help create community- the same kind of community that encourages people to shit in the same double ‘kybo’ together.
I peel off my pajamas, keeping my back to the shower-heads. Never have my motions felt so forced- each syllable of movement stressed as though choreographed by a rigid machine. My fingers fail to work properly. They entangle themselves in the drawstring of my pajama shorts as though deliberately trying to make me look clumsier. After what feels like an eternity, I manage shuffle my bright orange pajama pants off my hips. The small hairs on my thighs stand on end in the morning cold.
Desperately I grasp the sides of my underwear. I yank each hand downwards simultaneously, as if they too were going to put up a struggle. Stepping out of my shorts and panties, hunched forward to the point of unbalance, I hastily yank my tank top from my torso.
I still can’t find the courage to look in front of me.
I know I must look ridiculous, trying to hide the lower half of my body by bending at the waist, my breasts dangling in front of me like pendulums. In all my exposed and humiliating nakedness, I hunch-back over to the shower closest to me and frantically spin the knob, as though the water will cover my bare skin. It’s warm. The water is always warm this early in the morning.
I can’t avoid looking any longer.
Knock, knock. Who’s there?
Two showers down from me, a woman with long, wavy blond hair seems completely oblivious to my embarrassing, awkward presence. Her back is to me. Her hair is weighted down so far from the water it reaches almost to her bottom. She’s shaking it back and forth, trying to get the jet-stream of water to saturate every inch of the thick, rope-like mane. As she sways I cannot help but notice her thighs and buttocks undulate gently. I stare as though her thighs were the two threads of hypnotist’s chain, unable to tear my eyes away from the small of her back.
Breaking the spell she turns around, as if she had known of my presence all along, and wiping water from her pale eyes she smiles at me.
It’s Amelia. I smile back, my eyes as exhibitionists- exposing much more of my inner turmoil than the upturned corners of my moist, but chapped, lips. Abruptly jerking my head forward, I try not to glance at her again. My cheeks are hot.
Don’t be such a pervert.
I quickly grab the shampoo off the floor. I wonder if she’s looking at me. I tell myself that she must have much more interesting things to look at. Like the floor. The floor I am trying so desperately to stare down at in order to keep my eyes from drifting- twin boats straying from their wooden docks.
I can’t look at her again.
I try to finish my shower without another thought of Amelia. I only passively notice her pale white skin turning a cherry red where the water grasps the back of her thin, goose-like neck. I try my best to ignore the holy, angelic expression she wears on her face; her head tilted back, eyes closed in prayer. I imagine her long blond hair spread out on a pillow, a halo resting on a white cloud. I find myself picturing my brown skin pressed against hers. I want to press my palms into her skin and watch them sink into her. I want to live and die and be buried inside of her- her body as my tomb for eternity.
I shake myself into consciousness violently by scraping my scalp with soap and extra-intense conditioner. I glance at my loofah and the herbal body wash I usually use first thing in the morning. I cannot stand to think of myself lathering my body with perfumed soap while Amelia stands only a few feet away from me. It would be as if I raped her.
I grasp the shower knob and roughly spin it shut. The water stops. With one hand I wipe the water falling from my defeated hair and running onto my face. Despite the warmth of the water from both showers, I shiver silently. I allow myself one more backwards glance.
Pervert.
I scramble out of the shower area and snatch my clothes and towel. Without a backwards glance or a wave goodbye I step out of the shower house and into the woods- barely remembering to place my towel around my quivering shoulders.
I could hear the girls in the locker room, their voices ringing in my ears:
“Whad-aryah? A lesbo? Aryah a lesbo? Yah a lesbo?”
A lesbo?
A lesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbo?
Lesbo.
It’s cold outside.
It’s cold inside.
I crawl deeper into my sleeping bag, burrowing myself until my toes reach the bottom. I begin to feel two new mosquito bites on my right thigh. I’d scratch them, but it’s no use scratching bug bites before dawn.
I poke my head out of the top and immediately my hair floods into my eyes, nose and mouth. Beneath the strands of frizzy purple and redness, my eyes lazily wander around the room.
Nona’s gone.
She told me last night at the Hall that she had early morning asanas- camp chores. Hannah and Laura are still sleeping, wide mouthed and limbs displaced. Laura’s flashlight is still on, attracting hundreds of insects in the predawn light. I yawn twice and stretch. The bell should be sounding soon.
I glance downwards.
The wooden planks with small cracks between them look dreadfully unappealing this morning. And cold. I think I can see moss beneath the cabin floor, a stubborn green carpet growing beneath the cheap, but masterfully nailed floorboards.
The morning bell bellows faintly across the lake through the thick, foggy morning air. Silently, I count each ring in my head.
Ding-Dong.
One bell.
Ding-Dong.
Two bell.
Ding-Dong.
Three bell.
It’s time to get up.
Resolutely, I sit up and smack my hair away from my face. No matter what I do it refuses to be disciplined. When I was younger my hair used to hang like smooth, black curtains on the center of my back. But as I got older, those smooth follicles that I treasured as a little girl became kinkier and impossible to straighten. Instead of getting some kind of modernized conk like my friends, I decided to abuse my hair constructively- by dying it unnatural colors and chopping at it with razor blades.
I count to three.
1…2…
I quickly rip off the sleeping bag and leap out of my bunk. The cabin shakes a little bit with the sudden intrusion. The floor boards are freezing. The wind coming from the lake whips around me, making my eyes tear. My sleep clouded eyes, made even more blurry by the intrusive wind, make out my bright red “Coca Cola” towel and the family toiletries. I wrap the shampoo and conditioner in my towel, and in bare feet I gingerly step off of the cabin steps. Grudgingly, I climb upwards to the wooden shack. I hear the familiar sound of water cascading onto another floor of wooden planks. Soft dirt spills over my feet.
Someone is already up.
This leaves me with a dilemma; I don’t like showering with other people. I haven’t had to shower with anyone since Hannah and I were five, much prior to the uncomfortable changes that puberty has wracked onto my helpless and juvenile body. Now tiptoeing, as though whoever was inside would be as uncomfortable with my presence outside as I am of theirs. I carefully climb the small, steep embankment leading up to the small wooden shack. The spinner nailed haphazardly onto the communal shower house door reads “Woman showering, anyone welcome.” I wait for a moment, towel still in hand, deliberating.
If it’s just a woman in there… Well, it’s not like I don’t have anything she’s never seen before…It’s just like in the gym locker room…
But I know this was nothing like the gym locker room. In the locker room at school girls hide behind shower curtains or bathroom stalls. In the locker room girls hide their most private parts. They veil their mosquito bitten breasts and their adolescent vulvae under thick barricades of cotton and elastic. You aren’t allowed to look at the other girls, even if you are talking to them. If you look at the other girls, even if they are mostly dressed, you are called a ‘lesbo’. A lesbo was a dyke, a girl who wanted to do dirty things to other girls. A lesbo was not your friend, but a pariah of the middle school caste system.
Standing outside- listening to the sacred bathing ritual of another woman, where she is at her most alluring and most vulnerable, hair slicked back and eyelashes dark; eyes closed and completely exposed- I trembled. I knew there would be no elastic or cotton in the shower room.
There would be only flesh.
My flesh. Her flesh. My Flesh; against water; against wood; against water; against Her flesh. More intimate than touch, the water running in small pools down to our feet and then intermingling, like the Amazon and the Rio Negro, her blue river water converging with my black-brown tea water like cream into coffee.
I take a deep breath and push open the door. I make sure to quickly avert my eyes to the plain wooden planks of the shower floor. I cannot bear to see who is standing before me, not yet.
The shower house is made up of one divider in a 3 walled room, opened and wide mouthed like a smile. Like a woman with her legs spread open. This openness is the pinnacle of camp, and showering together is supposed to help create community- the same kind of community that encourages people to shit in the same double ‘kybo’ together.
I peel off my pajamas, keeping my back to the shower-heads. Never have my motions felt so forced- each syllable of movement stressed as though choreographed by a rigid machine. My fingers fail to work properly. They entangle themselves in the drawstring of my pajama shorts as though deliberately trying to make me look clumsier. After what feels like an eternity, I manage shuffle my bright orange pajama pants off my hips. The small hairs on my thighs stand on end in the morning cold.
Desperately I grasp the sides of my underwear. I yank each hand downwards simultaneously, as if they too were going to put up a struggle. Stepping out of my shorts and panties, hunched forward to the point of unbalance, I hastily yank my tank top from my torso.
I still can’t find the courage to look in front of me.
I know I must look ridiculous, trying to hide the lower half of my body by bending at the waist, my breasts dangling in front of me like pendulums. In all my exposed and humiliating nakedness, I hunch-back over to the shower closest to me and frantically spin the knob, as though the water will cover my bare skin. It’s warm. The water is always warm this early in the morning.
I can’t avoid looking any longer.
Knock, knock. Who’s there?
Two showers down from me, a woman with long, wavy blond hair seems completely oblivious to my embarrassing, awkward presence. Her back is to me. Her hair is weighted down so far from the water it reaches almost to her bottom. She’s shaking it back and forth, trying to get the jet-stream of water to saturate every inch of the thick, rope-like mane. As she sways I cannot help but notice her thighs and buttocks undulate gently. I stare as though her thighs were the two threads of hypnotist’s chain, unable to tear my eyes away from the small of her back.
Breaking the spell she turns around, as if she had known of my presence all along, and wiping water from her pale eyes she smiles at me.
It’s Amelia. I smile back, my eyes as exhibitionists- exposing much more of my inner turmoil than the upturned corners of my moist, but chapped, lips. Abruptly jerking my head forward, I try not to glance at her again. My cheeks are hot.
Don’t be such a pervert.
I quickly grab the shampoo off the floor. I wonder if she’s looking at me. I tell myself that she must have much more interesting things to look at. Like the floor. The floor I am trying so desperately to stare down at in order to keep my eyes from drifting- twin boats straying from their wooden docks.
I can’t look at her again.
I try to finish my shower without another thought of Amelia. I only passively notice her pale white skin turning a cherry red where the water grasps the back of her thin, goose-like neck. I try my best to ignore the holy, angelic expression she wears on her face; her head tilted back, eyes closed in prayer. I imagine her long blond hair spread out on a pillow, a halo resting on a white cloud. I find myself picturing my brown skin pressed against hers. I want to press my palms into her skin and watch them sink into her. I want to live and die and be buried inside of her- her body as my tomb for eternity.
I shake myself into consciousness violently by scraping my scalp with soap and extra-intense conditioner. I glance at my loofah and the herbal body wash I usually use first thing in the morning. I cannot stand to think of myself lathering my body with perfumed soap while Amelia stands only a few feet away from me. It would be as if I raped her.
I grasp the shower knob and roughly spin it shut. The water stops. With one hand I wipe the water falling from my defeated hair and running onto my face. Despite the warmth of the water from both showers, I shiver silently. I allow myself one more backwards glance.
Pervert.
I scramble out of the shower area and snatch my clothes and towel. Without a backwards glance or a wave goodbye I step out of the shower house and into the woods- barely remembering to place my towel around my quivering shoulders.
I could hear the girls in the locker room, their voices ringing in my ears:
“Whad-aryah? A lesbo? Aryah a lesbo? Yah a lesbo?”
A lesbo?
A lesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbolesbo?
Lesbo.