Page 14 - jesse book

apple became a little too prominent, or when my vagina just looked, not “real”.
We were to shower before entering the various jacuzzis and saunas. Once done, the ladies had hung their towels on a rack and waded slowly into the colder of the jacuzzis. I was last to walk over, and the minute I took my first step I could feel my heart pounding. All around me felt like feral eyes with a keen knowledge I didn’t have. Thankfully, I made it to the jacuzzi before one could pounce.
Under the protection of a jetstream and a submerged lower torso, I
felt the majority of my nerves slip away. Plus nothing cures insecurity
like gossip, and the women were full of it tonight. We gabbed about partners, workload, and beauty routines, We even peer pressured each other to try the other two pools, a warmer and a very hot one. Of course I nonchalantly covered my vagina the entire time. Even with what society deemed the “right” genitals, I still felt wrong in their eyes, but mostly in my own.
We were about 15 minutes into the very hot pool, when Victoria had suggested the saunas. The others agreed instantly, and I didn’t directly deny it, which equated an agreement. We slung our towels back on our bodies and made a slight path to the steam room.
I have, and will always hate the term “flipswitch”, not only is it inanely obvious, but it feels completely juvenile. In the course of the english language we have words like sanguine, evocative, and tumultuous and yet we insist on saying “flipswitch” because of colloquial ease. It feels limiting, but I digress. I stumbled slowly but surely to the sauna when I saw them.
Nothing particularly special or out of the ordinary for them, and to anyone else I might seem bizarre for resonating so deeply. However, the moment I saw them, something, not a flipswitch, happened and it turned into a truly enchanting night.
In front of me were two elderly Korean women, one was sitting, the other standing above her. The standing woman had used a neon
green scrubber to scrape the dead skin off her friend’s back. She would intermittently go to her arms or her neck, but it was the sheer elbow grease and dedication she put into each downward strike; all to help out her friend. These women... could give an absolute fuck less about anyone