Standing in the bathroom of a Japanese youth hostel,
I was just eleven, wrapped in a big white towel.
All around the walls were fifteen silver showers,
Our group would gather in to wash, and stay for half an hour.
Thirty girls in swimming costumes
Underneath the steamy flow
All as nervous as the rest,
trying not to let it show.
Some wore bikinis
Some wore tankinis
Some wore the cozzies that they’d recently outgrown.
Weeks went by and one by one
The girls became less foreign
Eyeing up the bathtub –
serenely sunken in the tiled floor.
“No swimming costumes in the tub!
You must be naked to get in.”
The Japanese girls took theirs off
And got in straight away to swim.
The Norwegians followed swiftly,
Used to steamy lakeside saunas.
(And besides the pool looked fun, and really was much warmer)
It took a while but soon enough the others all joined in.
I watched, self-conscious, as they swam around like pearly fish:
All completely hairless.
For weeks I kept my distance from it,
standing by the cold white wall -
I thought they’d think I was a freak.
At eleven, a big dark bush
Does make you kind of freaky.
Eventually I just got bored of showering in clothes.
I took them off and jumped straight in,
To make sure no one saw my pubes.
The next day I was in again,
And the next day after that.
I’d float face down and watch the sunlight dance around the tiles.
Then float face up, and laugh about the game we’d won, earlier on.
No trace of dirt you’d find on me, I’d get my arms completely clean,
Not scrub around the edges of my insecurities.
I knew the girls and they knew me.
And even now, the freedom of knowing: everyone else has something wrong!
Everyone else has hairy legs!
And when it’s nothing to do with sex,
It’s relieving to be so free
Of judgement and society.
A few of the girls never got in,
Standing sadly by the side,
Terrified of stepping out,
Too prudish to remove their clothes,
Too scared of being in the nude.
I think about that pool sometimes,
When cruel thoughts come again to mind,
About my legs and how I look-
“I’d better do things by the book”.
Perhaps we’d hate our bodies less,
If we weren’t always fully dressed.