singin' in the rain

the woman at the ymca scares me.

every day at lunch, i try to get out to the ymca for a little swim. fortunately, the village people song no longer pops into my head as i drive past the bookmobile and pull my car into the parking lot. the big, pink building is nestled next to the 101 highway in marin and inside it holds an entire cast of david lynch characters. there's the autistic man that sits in the hot tub, swaying his head back and forth while his eyes roll to the back of his head. there are the obsese elderly women in their floral bathing caps who walk around in their water aerobics classes, trying not to get their makeup wet. there was the midget woman, who i've only seen once as she spoke to friends or co-workers on the locker room pay phone, the receiver just barely reached to her ear.

and then there's the cleaning woman with the speech impediment.

i feel bad that i get nervous around the woman with the speech impediment because i can never understand anything that she's saying. i know that i wouldn't be able to continue any sort of conversation with her because i wouldn't have a clue about what we would be talking about. so every day she cleans the locker room while i get into my swimsuit and i shyly try to avoid eye contact, fearing that any recognition might start one of the dreaded conversations. i know i shouldn't feel so weird around her, especially considering that my mentor at the radio station where i had dj'd had cerebral palsy and was barely intelligible herself. for reasons that i still can't quite figure out, rose's cerebral palsy unintelligibility was a completely different language than the cleaning woman's unintelligibility.

anyway, there i was in the shower, totally naked and trying to get that chlorine smell out of my skin when the cleaning woman got down on her knees next to me and started scrubbing the grout out of the tiles. for a second, i froze. i wasn't quite sure what to do. she was... fully clothed in my shower. i tried my best to not get shampoo all over her, and wondered what my next mode of action should be. she yelled something... i think it had something to do with the grout.

the other women showering next to me were completely oblivious to my panic. they laughed and talked to each other about minivans or children or something that i was trying to ignore. meanwhile, the cleaning lady was getting more and agitated about the grout, scrubbing with increased fervor. she looked up at me and smiled.

augh! she looked up at me! we made eye contact! i'm naked in the shower, she's saying unintelligible things and i don't know how to respond. i'm such a moron.

nervously, i washed the rest of the shampoo out of my hair and quickly rinsed myself off as she continued on her jihad. i shut the water off and ran off towards my locker, hoping never to look at grout again.

<04.30.01>

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