Covering Up

K and I are checking out gyms. It's part of our plan for a smart, healthy life together. Of course, we like the most expensive one best. It's close to the house, the yoga teacher is superb, and some friends of ours already belong there. Best of all, there is a hot tub, steam room and dry sauna right there in the women's locker room. We don't have to put on our suits and mingle with men when we want a soak after basketball.

Alice Waters once wrote (if I remember correctly) "I'm not a sepratist. Except occasionally, for my health." I feel the same way. I love the nudity of the locker room; the freedom to stroll from shower to tub wearing nothing but flip-flops. I love being surrounded by naked women of assorted shapes and sizes. Few of them, even the really toned ones, resemble the sex and sales goddesses that permeate our media culture. None of them seem to notice or mind how widely they all differ from the projected "norm" of Heidi Klums and Nicole Kidmans.

I'm sure many of them do mind. Most of them probably have body image issues and eating disorders that plague their days and dreams. But, I can't tell by looking at them. From my seat in the whirlpool, it looks like an organic garden of healthy women's bodies. The gardener has obviously read about the ills and dangers of monoculture, and instead has planted heirloom varieties, betting on the strength and abundance that comes with diversity.

In an environment like this, I could shamelessly display the recent alteration to my birthday suit. But I don't.

The first time, I wrapped a towel around myself.

I remember learning to do this. We were at the Waynesboro swimming pool. Mom showed me how to pull the long edge of a beach towel tight around my waist until all that was left was a handful of terry cloth at the corner. Under her direction, I gave the piece in my hand a twist, and stuffed it into what was now the waist of my instant skirt!

Years later, I was still wrapping and twisting beach towels around my waist, until the day I saw this girl Anna at the pool. She wasn't a particular friend of mine, but she was the daughter of the man who did my mom's taxes...so we stopped and said, "hi."

I could not take my eyes off her hips. Anna was a talkative, popular girl at school. I'm sure my apparent fascination with her damp and scantily clad body boosted my own reputation as a weirdo and freak. But, I wasn't looking at her. I was looking at her beach towel.

Her cover-up arrangement completely side-stepped the laws of nature, physics and pool-side fashion, as I understood them at the time. Alone in my bedroom, I tried to copy her style.

First I wrapped the entire towel around my waist, all the way to the corner. I didn't twist and tuck like I'd been doing since early childhood. Instead, I held the entire thing flat against my body, and then folded the whole thing down, creating a kind of waist-band that held the towel in place. I was impressed and amazed. It had never occurred to me that there was more than one way to wrap a towel around yourself and hold it there without pins or clips.

I tried to wear my towel flat-folded like this the next few times I went to the pool. Finally, I had found a way to dress like the cool kids, without the money. But I couldn't break my old habit. To this day, I am still a twist-and-tucker at heart. But my adjusted anatomy may force a chance that peer envy couldn't.

In the women's locker room at the fancy health club, I try to twist and tuck a towel around my chest. I'm long and the towels are short, only barely managing to cover my ass. It's okay. It's not my ass I feel anxious about.

I've grown accustomed to the way my scar and single breast look next to each other. And K., in a surreal moment of what I think was honesty actually said to me the other day, "I like the way you look!" I was naked from the waist up at the time, so I am apparently not the only one in the house who's gotten used to my ammended figure.

But the women at the gym haven't had a chance to get accustomed to me. I don't want to shock them. I don't want to startle them. I'm happy to open up my blouse and show my scar to anyone who expresses the slightest interest, but I do feel like people deserve a little warning.

So I don't mind that the towels are too short to cover my ass, they cover my chest. For a few minutes, at least.

The twist-and-tuck method, which has served me so faithfully these past 3 decades, won't hold anymore. I used to do the tucking part right into my cleavage. But, I don't have cleavage anymore. I tried to tuck on the flat part where my right breast used to be, but even 6 months after my surgery, I'm too sensitive. It hurts to tuck it there. So I tuck under my arm, but the angle is wrong or something, and the towel won't stay.

I tried the flat-fold technique too. But that shortens the towel by a good 3 inches. I look silly and strange walking around like this. My towel stops exactly where modesty, and R rated film protocols, dictate coverage should begin.

So I carry the towel and cover up my chest with my hand, first the right, and then the left. I start with the right, holding my scar under cover. After all, that is the problem side. But I feel ridiculous holding a hand against my flat chest, while my free breast bounces happily in the bright light. So I switch, and hold my other side instead. My scar doesn't really look that bad by itself. It's only the juxtaposition with my healthy breast and nipple that makes my chest seem shocking. Without the comparison to give the viewer context, I think I look okay. It's just a flat area of my body, with a scar in the middle. Who cares? No one sensible will be appalled or affronted by this.

It's a good technique, until I start to feel self-conscious about grabbing my own breast. No one else is doing it. I start to feel inappropriate and vaguely sexual, like those teen age boys who cup their testicles in public. So I put both hands on my chest, covering both sides. I do this until I need a free hand for something for opening a door or drinking water. Then the switch-off routine starts all over again.