Gertrude Auslander was not ordinarily shy, but now, in the United States at the gym, she was feeling out of place. She and a couple friends had just come in for an evening workout and steam: the usual light weights and half an hour on the treadmill or elliptical trainer was Trudi's plan. The workout went fine, good music on the stereo contributed to a good hard burn and a pleasant, mildly sore feeling. Now after a cool shower, a quick steam bath should have been the ultimate relaxer, but it wasn't working out that way at all.
Instead, Trudi sat in the room with her two friends, Anji and William, and another couple, and squirmed with embarrassment. The room was smallish, just big enough for perhaps nine people on two low opposing benches and one higher one. The atmosphere inside was quiet & cloudlike, almost scalding with the sound of an occasional hot droplet condensing on the ceiling and spattering on the clean white tiles below. There was a big picture window that overlooked the pool, but due to the steam, it wasn't really much use. Pretty much ideal conditions.
The room was *so* steamy that on entering, Trudi couldn't even tell who was who, or at first, even how many people were in there. In a great mood, she spotted the empty lower bench under the window and headed for it, bursting out with a cheerful "So which of you sweaty couples is Anji and William?" She had just whipped off her towel and sat on it right in the middle of the bench facing the others before she even recognized the social situation. Her words seemed echoey and over-loud in the close, quiet room.
There was one couple on each of the opposite benches, and Anji answered from the higher one, "This is us, we're over here, Trudi" just as her Trudi's eyes adjusted to the lowered light levels, and she spotted them on the left, fully clothed. Ahead to her right, scant feet away on the lower bench were the other a couple of strangers, also dressed and all 4 of them looking at her fully UNclothed and rapidly flushing naked body like she was some kind of kinky, ...something!
Nobody else was wearing a towel or even bothered to bring one, but they were *all* wearing swimming costumes, and conservative ones at that! Even though she was in America, Trudi hadn't thought to bring one to the gym at all, just assuming the offer of a steam automatically meant "nude," as a matter of course.
Apparently though, Americans took their steam clothed.
"Oh, gosh, *excuse me!" Trudi stammered, jerking up from her seat, whirling and bending to get her towl, only to realize that both revealed and drew attention to her bare ass. She was practically pushing it in his face! The guy over there could literally reach out and touch it.
Needing to make up for her mistake somehow, Trudy blundered along, saying, "I'm German, see, so we always used to go in the steam room, and I always thought..." a useless and not even believable excuse, even though it WAS true. At the same time she spun and tried to tie her towel back in place at the same time. Somehow this was even more embarrassing since now she had her arms spread and the towel behind her back, adjusting the height to cover everything and for a second that seemed like ten times that long, was giving a full frontal shot to a couple of strangers! Her tits were right at their eye level: God! Plus, she didn't really know Anji's new boyfriend Willianm well enough to be giving him a strip show like this either. It seemed like her whole body blushed red before finally getting the towel tied back in place. Trudi let her disclaimers die die away to a meaningless whisper, and quietly sat down, feeling miserable.
Now Trudi sat silent, covered as best she could with the towel, and unconsciously cramped over in one corner of the upper bench trying to be invisible. Another drop fell, splatted in the silence. Then, with a click, the steam turned back on and a new wave of humid cloud began to roll in along the floor, along with a roaring, hissing sound effectively ending whatever polite "that's ok" sort of remonstrances anybody might have wanted to give. The obscuring cloud of vapor couldn't come fast enough for Trudi who could now see all 4 of the others pretty clearly. She felt like she could read Anji's expression of embarrassed sympathy, almost. That was just assumption though, it was really too foggy for that. The other guy just across from her was only a couple of feet away, and he was looking right at her though, down at her waist. Not her waist, lower! With a fresh wave of embarrasment Trudi realized the short gym towel wasn't covering everything sufficiently and she was *still* giving a show.
Trying not to make a big deal out of it, she pressed her legs together even harder than they already were, turned away from the others and ootched over a bit towards the farthest corner of the bench, sobbing a little (thank God for all the steam noise) and pretending to look out at the pool. That was fake: you couldn't see anything out the mostly opaque steam covered window, but she sure didn't want to look at anybody else. Her friend Anjin came to her rescue.
