BREAST STORIES

Whose Breasts Are Those

Scenes from the locker room

I don’t know whose breasts were in my face yesterday because I didn’t look up.

I had just stood from the wall dryer in the locker room when I saw them. Her breasts were directly in front of my eyes. I hadn’t been that close to someone else’s breasts since I went to support a friend on her first night of stripping. She was nervous so she kept shoving her breasts in my face. I was her gateway face.

This was different. This was the Everyone locker room, which is co-ed. Someone walking around topless caught me off guard. Normally it was adults lugging exercise bags with screaming soaking-wet kids in tow.

Though bare breasts are the norm in the women’s locker room upstairs, seeing them in the Everyone locker room was unusual. On the other hand, swimming is exhausting. Maybe her arms were too tired to pull on a shirt.

I don’t normally dry my hair with a wall dryer or any kind of dryer. But, it’s been cold lately — the kind of cold that shuts down airlines and makes wet hair just crack off. I didn’t feel like regrowing my hair because it came off with an icicle.

Swimmers are like lizards drawn to sunny rocks. Maybe her breasts were cold from the pool and sought the warmth of the open steamy locker room. That made sense to my own breasts. I jumped into the lake this morning and my breasts are still cold. I blame my nipples, those Jack Frost-attracting buggers.

Maybe the woman forgot the locker room was co-ed. Or she didn’t give a shit because they’re just breasts. Maybe she was one of those sane people who is acutely aware of her smallness and did not feel like the world was staring only at her.

I had a friend like that in college. She was an unapologetic curvy goddess who was utterly unhindered by her sexiness. Her curvaceousness wasn’t something she put away to make other people feel more comfortable. She wouldn't have thought twice about walking through an Everyone locker room in her birthday suit.

Maybe the woman was European and didn’t think her breasts were such a big deal. American locker rooms. Amirite?

It was powerful seeing the woman’s uncovered breasts up close — then noticing her walking slowly across the locker room — not rushing through — like she had something to hide.

I kept my head down, reverent, allowing her privacy she was not requiring. I was making something of it, if only in my peanut brain.

Hold on. I think I know whose breasts they were, like that matters.