Nude
Laura Lassen
There were naked women everywhere. I tried to keep my eyes low, but it was almost impossible. Everywhere I looked, there was nakedness—wrinkly women, hairy women, pale women, large women, skinny teenaged women, women with small breasts, women with breasts that hung to their belly buttons. 16 and mortified, I stood completely still, not knowing which article of clothing I was going to remove first to conceal as much of my body as possible. Best of all, my high school soccer team was standing next to me.
It was our first time in Denmark, and our first time in a Danish gym. We had just departed from Vildbjerg, a small town three and a half hours west of Copenhagen, after competing in the Vildbjerg Cup. It was early August, and we had spent the week playing against international high school teams during the country’s record-breaking heat wave. Worn out from the tournament, the heat, and our packed week of sightseeing in Copenhagen and Sweden, my coach planned a relaxing day at a gym. We were only told about the pools, saunas, and hot tubs—not the open-concept, comfortably naked locker room situation. Our high school locker rooms in New Jersey had done little to prepare us for this.
“What the fuck?” my teammate next to me whispered, trying to hide a giggle. She was as awkward and petrified as I was. I scanned the wide-eyed faces of the rest of my teammates, who were frozen as well.
Wooden benches lined the perimeter of the open-concept room, with small lockers arranged in neat rows and columns. Piles of clothes were scattered around the benches. Looking awkwardly at each other, the 15 of us migrated together across the room, ending up near one of the corners. I placed my drawstring bag on the bench and started to poke aimlessly at its contents.
What now? How could I slip into my bathing suit in the most discreet way? Did I have to remove all of my clothes like the other women there, who showered naked before entering the gym’s pools? What were my teammates doing? I found my bathing suit in my drawstring. Then I shoved it back in the bag, and then I grabbed it again, doing everything as slowly as I could, so as not to be the first one changing.
“You’re putting your bathing suit on now, right?” I whispered to another teammate next to me. She gave a half nod in return, eyes completely set on her locker that faced away from everyone else.
I turned back to my locker—accidentally glimpsed a butt in the process—and kept my eyes locked on the dark cube that would hold my clothes.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, giggling erupted behind me. A cluster of my teammates were huddled together, talking loudly and stifling laughs. From across the room, one woman glared. Her nipples were staring me in the face. My teammates, on the other hand, ignored her and kept laughing. I don’t know if their laughs were out of nervousness, or if they were making a joke out of the whole thing for the hell of it.
Either way, all the attention was on us—the eyes of what felt like every naked woman in the locker room. My face turned red, the way it did constantly throughout our trip whenever this sort of thing happened. It was easy for them to stare. We were obnoxious, teenage Americans who brought attention to ourselves everywhere we went. I turned my body away from them and kept rummaging through my bag.
It was time for us to change. The steam coming from the showers stuck to my t-shirt and shorts. And the nervous sweat on my body made removing my clothes even more awkward and difficult. As I began to pull my shorts down, concealing my underwear with my shirt, I stared only at the locker in front of me. I focused on the black “301” pasted in the center of the metal door. Then I started to count the lockers through the corner of my eye to distract myself. Locker number 301 in front of me, and then 302, 303, and 202 and 203 below them. I made guesses on how many total lockers there were, and the total amount of square feet that they would take up. I created patterns in my head about them. I imagined removing them from the walls and stacking them like boxes.
When it was finally done, I turned to face the rest of the locker room with a weight off my chest. Some of my teammates had already changed and were heading out to the pool entrance. They were crossing through the shower room first, where all the steam had been coming from. As I raced across the slippery tile floor to follow them, I kept my eyes down again. The showers were even more open concept than the main locker room.
Violent bursts of giggling still erupted from our group as we walked past the women showering. My face too red to look any of my teammates in the eyes, I silently followed them out of the locker room and into the pool area. The horrific ten minutes was over.
Laura Lassen (Class of 2024) is studying English with double minors in creative writing and political science. She plays rugby for the women’s club team at Rutgers, and in her free time, she loves playing guitar.
Professor Blaney selected this piece for inclusion in WHR.