Bodies / Bags

Today I tried to be a person who chats to strangers and it didn’t work.

I had been swimming and the changing room was bustling with confident older women. Women who swim and opine about theatre whilst towelling off, applying lotion, battling with ludicrous bra straps and climbing into underpants*. I noticed a few things about the women today, one was that they had nicer bags than me. 

My bag set up is a JD sports plastic bag salvaged from my son’s bin and a canvas toiletries bag bought for a school residential. Margaret, in contrast, had an amazing portable vanity unit in a William Morris fabric that she rolled out and hung from one of the clothes pegs. It had a mirror and little compartments for all her lotions and bits. This said to me ‘I value my rituals and I value myself’. I was covetous. I decided that complimenting Margaret on her traveling vanity set up would be a good ice-breaker and might get me into the inner circle of changing room chat. Margaret has a tattoo of a butterfly between her shoulder blades which I also considered complimenting, but the bag felt less objectifying. 

I just had to find a good moment to casually drop the compliment, which meant waiting for Margaret to finish talking to Jane**. Jane was talking about her amazing towel which was lighter and more absorbent than a standard one (I’m interested in this set up too, but one thing at a time) and Margaret was giving good chat return that suggested genuine interest in the topic and the person. Jane then carried on the towel theme by saying that it was great for holidays because it takes up less space in the suitcase which meant she could take more clothes which drives her husband mad but SHE’S A WOMAN (actually shouted) haha and so winding him up by overpacking is more or less hard-wired into her DNA. “Haha hmm!” replies Margaret – and I know Jane’s fucked up, Margaret isn’t into all that binary gender tropes shit, I can tell by the way she is now trying to subtilty exit the conversation. Meanwhile I’m making good progress with my own lotion and underpant regimen and time is running out for the casual bag compliment. 

Jane walks towards the shower and I think, ‘great, this is over, I have a window’. Then Jane pauses, almost at the showers, and starts talking about her psoriasis, and how it can be really bad ‘down there’, “oh you don’t want to go there!” jokes Margaret in a clear attempt to end this whole chat nightmare and get Jane in the shower. “I ALWAYS GO THERE” replies Jane loudly and carries on talking in great detail about which creams she uses (standard baby lotion, none of the expensive stuff) and then moves on to how she’s the same with sun cream, just the basic stuff. “Hmm” agrees Margaret in a polite non-committal way, the chat equivalent of playing dead. But no, Jane isn’t done. She puts sun cream on her dad’s head you see, because men don’t do sun cream do they and he’s had a cancerous growth removed already. Jane also puts sun cream on her cat’s ears, it’s a white cat and white cats get ear cancer (I assume she meant skin cancer of the ears but I’m not checking). I feel for Margaret but I also think there were a few opportunities to kill this one dead that she didn’t take.

I’m dressed and ready to go, the bag compliment ship has sailed and I am so relieved. What if I’d chosen to compliment Jane on her towel? That would be me now, instead of Margaret, reduced to silently nodding as Jane continues her filter-less oversharing. Rolling up the lovely bag that she hasn’t had a moment to enjoy. Maybe I will never figure this casual acquaintance thing out, and maybe that’s ok. 

* Thanks goes again to Clare Dederer for inspiring the use of ‘underpants’ as opposed to the brilliantly British ‘knickers’, which could be a great word but why do we need a gendered term for underpants? So one can sound sexy and coquettish and that one can be the word associated with little girl underpants? Fuck that shit. From now on we are all wearing UNDERPANTS (unless we aren’t). 

** all names have been completely made up.