The Agony and the Nudity.

This morning, I got into a verbal altercation in the locker room of my gym. It was so supremely absurd/horrifying/annoying, that I am going to dispense with all writing conventions, like grammar and style, and just grunt for several paragraphs.

There is this woman. She’s older, maybe early to mid 40s, thin and ropey like Madonna:

Are you turned on yet?

This woman, between the hours of 8-9am, just hangs out in the locker room completely stark-ballz-ass nude. I swear, I have never seen this woman so much as stand next to a treadmill, an arc trainer, a stair climber, or even tilt her head to one side as if struck by the thought of using any of these things. In other words, I don’t believe she actually works out on the gym floor. I have however, walked in on her in the locker room on several unfortunate occasions as she struck her freaky yoga poses completely in the buff. And when she’s not doing that, she’s just prancing around in the nude saying hi to people. Over the last couple of months, I have had the unfortunate privilege of becoming acquainted with her vagina due to her repeated and prolonged use of the locker room for her own personal freaky nude yoga studio. It's terrible and you should pity me. The room is sort of S shaped, so you turn a corner, then you turn another corner and BAM. Huge, hairy, unkempt vagina staring you right in the face. It's like looking down into a sewer tunnel.

This must be how her gynecologist feels.

Well, maybe not. Because I feel like my eyeballs have been violated. Like, they want a scalding hot shower and an over-sized sweater. But I digress.
This nudist yogi has been trying to chat me up now for the past several weeks for reasons that are utterly beyond my comprehension, because--you'll have to take my word for it--I don’t give off a voluble vibe. Generally, I breeze in, throw my shit around like a belligerent gorilla, fill my water bottle indignantly, and storm out making as little eye contact with people as possible. This is because I hate the locker room. It is perpetually one poorly-scripted dialogue away from becoming a full-on porno movie.

Anyway, today, this woman finally sent me over the precipice.

Wearing only a dopey expression, she boxes me in to a corner as I’m furiously retrieving my things, and starts talking about--what do you know?--the weather.  I look at her straight in the face and say two words, enunciated as clearly as my mouth can form them: “ABSOLUTELY NOT.” I believe I even put my hand in her face, just for maximum effect.
She looks at me like I just slapped her. It actually struck her dumb for a whole 5 seconds. “I’m sorry?” She finally stammers.
“I said, absolutely not. As in, I am absolutely not having this conversation with you unless you put on a fucking towel, so shut it down.”
“Oh my god, how rude! You don’t have to look, you know.”
“On the contrary, it is virtually impossible not to look, as you are fully frontal and practically rubbing your labia on me. No wait, perhaps you're right. Perhaps I could just put out both of my eyes and never see again.”
“It’s really sad that nudity makes you this uncomfortable, honey.”
“Nudity doesn’t make me uncomfortable, honey. You make me uncomfortable. I don’t know what kind of granola-eating, patchouli-wearing, Deepak Chopra-reading, southern California hippy commune you hail from, friend, but here in Boston, we appreciate healthy doses of self-loathing and shame. Now put on a fucking towel.”

It was roughly around this point that one of the female staff members walked directly into the middle of our little discourse.

“What’s wrong ladies?” She asks, her eyes darting nervously from one of us to the other.

The naked lady starts telling her that I’m a rude bitch that picked a fight with her, and that I'm ageist and insulting and against free expression blah blah blah, at which point, my dangerously high blood pressure compelled me to interject on my sanity's behalf.

“No, I’ll tell you what’s wrong, because clearly all the downward dog Lady Godiva over here has been doing has left her slightly confused about the central point, which is: I don’t appreciate spending $70 a month to come in here and give this woman free gynecological exams. Now, if you look to your right or to your left, you will notice that there are a lot of other women in various states of undress in this room. None of these women have ever shown me their vaginal walls or backed me into a corner to talk about snow storms while shoving their pancake nipples in my face. And as for insulting her, well-- correct me if I’m wrong—but if she’s looking for the judgment free zone, she’s at the wrong gym. I deliberately pay more to come to this gym specifically so I can judge people.”

“I was just trying to make friendly conversation. You need to learn to have a healthy respect for the human body in it's pristine form.”

“Ma’am, I don’t ever want to ever talk to you ever, not until you learn to have a healthy respect for clothing. And there is nothing pristine about your cavernous vagina. I've seen porn stars with tighter genitalia.”

So this situation resolved itself when I walked out with the staff member who spent about ten minutes apologizing profusely, while simultaneously congratulating me for calling the crazy bitch out, as this woman has a history of making people uncomfortable with her unfortunate vagina.

Look at that. I’m a fucking hero.