“Bonjour, Mesdames,” he announced. “Pardonnez-moi.” He begged everyone’s pardon for the disturbance, but he was the plumber, he said, come to the ladies’ changing room to solve the problem of the leaky sink. Beside him laden with tools and balancing a ladder stood his apprentice son; he looked about 21. The changing ladies in the buff, or in some version thereof did not shriek or run or faint or cover-up? “Bonjour Messieurs,” they said, entirely nonplussed. The plumber and his son passed through the friendly throng, clattering wrenches and whatnot. As they went they muttered pardon, Madame, pardon. And the Frenchwomen stepped out of panties and shucked brassieres; they shimmied into shape-wear and stripped out of slips. Plumbers? Any one of them might have said. So?
Clad only in my new slinky pinks, I heard a “Pardon, Madame” so close it had to be directed to me. I froze.
Moi? I turned to stare at the hovering plumber, in shock.
Yes, he meant me. I was blocking the way to the sink, which stood directly ahead in my corner. Leaking. The plumber’s son scooched by with his ladder and tipped his hat, “Bonjour, Madame.” Then the two, clattering, set-up shop on the bench closest to mine. The most miserable of moments arrived. I wondered: Did Edith Wharton ever have a fear of her naked self? If so, what protocol did she suggest for the presence of French plumbers when one has stripped down to intimates – silk bits that are the next thing to go?
“First of all,” she once said, “the Frenchwoman is, in nearly all respects, as different as possible from the average American woman…The Frenchwoman is grown-up. Compared with the women of France, the American woman is still in the kindergarten.”
What Wharton would say: Oh grow-up. If I didn’t remove my slinky pink things without an ounce of shame, I would never make it to first grade. Really, what were the plumber and his son to me, except perhaps plumbers? In that flash of nudity between underwear off and workout-wear on, what harm could they cause in the midst of the changing room’s entire colony of non-plussed nudes? On the count of…three: There I went. I squeezed my eyes closed and off with the ruffles, out of all bows. But I didn’t even have to peek to know. My raw glory garnered less interest than a drip. The men, both bent over the sink and fiddling with a wrench, looked up at me and back at the leak like, her? Her who?
“There is in France a kind of collective, cultural shrug about nakedness,” Ollivier said, said. Edith Wharton agreed: “The French,” she said, “are accustomed to relating openly and unapologetically the anecdotes that Anglo-Saxons snicker over privately and with apologies.” I’m sorry, but the plumbers’ total disinterest in my body bare left me giggly with a secret, newfound freedom. Just think! Frump or no, I could flaunt my feminine fixtures and ask for nothing in the way of drama. Then, the plumber’s son looked up, caught my eye, and winked.
Oh.
Day 4. When I arrived to attend class in Pilates, the ever-friendly monsieur said the usual Bonjour, Madame and directed me to the ladies’ changing room – on the first floor.
“But Monsieur!” I cried, by now perturbed. “Why does the ladies’ changing room keep changing?” Second floor, first floor; first floor, second. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s the hot tub, Madame. The men’s changing room does not have one, so it’s only juste that the men are given the