IAB, 12:30 p.m.

THERE ARE 15 urinals flanking the inside wall of the women's locker room at the IAB. In 15 minutes, only one woman of the 18 who passed them asked me why I was sitting there, staring.

I want to see if women are embarrassed by their bodies, I told her. O, she said, turned, dropped her towel and began to wash her hair.

In the last month I have become increasingly nervous about showering with 15 urinals watching me. I have begun to think about the calculated embarrassment of the girls at Brookfield Junior High School--and, I suspect at every other junior high school in the country.

At Brookfield the girls/women have perfected an all-in-one showering-dressing motion. This complex dance with towel involves getting undressed and into gymsuits, then dressed again without baring any excess anatomy. It is a socially sanctioned maneuver. One is expected to learn it, and put it into practice.

But I cannot muster it to my defense here. Not even in the face of 15 ill-bred urinals.

The women in the locker room today seem graceful enough, casual enough even without the dance. I wondered if they had ever learned it. I crawled out of my corner and stopped a girl walking by.

"Oh yes, I remember it," she said. "Hiding behind the shower curtain and all that. "I think this is much healthier," she said. "I'm not embarrassed at all." She threw the towel over her shoulder and walked a few steps away, then turned. "I do wish they'd get a bigger pool, though. I do not like rubbing bodies while I'm trying to swim laps."

Everyone venturing from the halflight of the lockerroom into the pool stiffens for an instant as she approaches the pool. Perhaps it is Asimov's space shock--caused by the sudden shift from the low-ceilinged ill-lighted gloom to the vast high-ceilinged expanse of the pool room.

Or maybe it is from looking up at the huge stands, which could so easily be filled with hundreds of spectators. At any rate, some tiny muscles in our stomachs and necks and abdomens hear Mummy talking and obey: "Do hold your head up higher, dear, and pull in your stomach a little, that's a good girl."

I watched 13 girls enter the pool. Each one walked out into the light, glanced around her, pulled her stomach in and her head higher and walked toward the edge of the pool.

I went back to my corner. The urinals seemed determined to be my enemies. Number three, under which I was sitting, began to drip on my head. I moved one space down. The women returning from their swim do not tense their stomachs. They are tired. Their muscles are long and extended from swimming and they are relaxed. They go about their business, dressing, preparing for classes. They do not seem aware of the urinals, or of me, sitting against the wall.

The showers in the lockerroom are wonderful for washing hair. They run hot and strong and rinse every sticky bit of chlorine out. Women who swim regularly seem to have manufactured for themselves imaginary cubicles in the air. Each girl seems oblivious to the other as she putters around, turning and dipping, and measuring out her hair cream.

A smell of herbal essence permanently fills the air and only fades away as you move in one direction towards the chlorine-sharp air of the pool, or toward the burning air of the drying room.

A girl emerges dripping, obviously tired and cold, from her swim. She disappears into the locker area and reappears with an armful of bottles. She lines the bottles up against the wall and carefully tests the water. Only then does she pull off her bathing cap and shake down a fall of deep red hair, below her waist and curly.

Another girl stations herself at the adjacent showerhead. She removes the top of her bathing suit with a swing that sends cold chlorine water into the other's face.

"Oh, I'm very sorry," the first says, stiffly polite. She looks again and recognizes a friend from the diving class. She laughs. "I didn't recognize you. I mean with your hair on," she said, tugging at her own cap.

"I swam 33 laps today," she said, demonstrating exhaustion. "I try to do a few more every day."

"Don't you get bored?"

"Sometimes. I swim up on my stomach and back on my back and count the ribs in the ceiling. Do you swim every day?"

"Almost. I missed one day about a week ago and then, well, just got out of the habit for a while. But it makes the whole day a lot easier if I swim a while. Do you swim for exercise?"

"A little. Mostly it's just fun."

I WATCH the two girls talking, looking for any stiffness in two newly-acquired friends. There is none. No change in posture, no half turning-away. Not even the subtle, residual tummy tuck, sucking in the breath and the abdomen together as we walk into a group of strange people.

The two chat, share shampoos and in almost continuous motion, gather up their bottles and towels and now-limp suits. Under the hair dryer the conversation stops as the canned wind throws their hair to their eyes and roars past their ears. They grin at each other and at the matron, who is sweeping puddles of water at the drain.

The girl with the long red hair pulls it high on her head, bends and lets it fall, brushing it into the dryer. The two do a little jogstep to save their toes as the matron moves more puddles out from under them.

The matron, a grandmother probably, every day at 1:45 removes herself to a corner to change. She takes off her white attendant's uniform, steps into a long purple acetate dress and fastens a single strand of pearls. At 1:48 she begins to sweep again. She times the sweep to a rhythmic chant that does not vary from day to day. "Two o'clock, pool closes, hurry up please."

She has sat there for more hours than I. She watches the girls go by, nods and smiles. She talks to them sometimes, a little about Thanksgiving maybe, or Christmas holidays and going home, or about the temperature outside. Mostly she sweeps and watches the girls go by.

Sometimes she cleans the urinals, which seems to me a thankless task.

And at 1:58 she begins to chant:

"Pool closes, hurry up please."

. . . . . . . . .

"Hurry up please, it's time. Hurry up please, it's time."