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The gym was crowded, so crowded there was a line forming at the showers, so many white bodies so close to each other, so close to touching There was something as sinister as sisterly about all those bodies lined up in the tiled room, bodies with the same attributes in different variations, two of these, two of these, one of these The gym was already a sort of selector for the healthy and the able, and so the variations were minor, unremarkable until unclothed and paraded all around in one damp space Darker nipple, lighter nipple Puffy nipple, flat nipple Nipples, all of them   In the sauna, where Anja went to wait for the shower line to diminish, she was surrounded by bodies still, but bodies that were being still, elbows folded in against sweaty sides, breasts flattened unthreateningly upon reclining rib cages She knew she was an alien There they were, inhabiting their bodies, and here she was, rocking around inside hers They knew what their bodies looked like, and they knew what their attitudes toward their bodies looked like –  sanctioned variations on confidence and insecurity: this one likes her legs but worries about her lopsided shoulder; this one hunches because she’s too tall; this one defies anyone to call her thighs too big and so wears very tight pants; this one is warm and round and doesn’t self-criticise, but she does work her upper body extra hard on Tuesdays   Anja didn’t know how to classify her body, she only knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t her fault She was naturally thin, and that was supposed to be good But she had gotten even thinner than usual in the last weeks, which was supposed to be not good She had noticed a rash on one of her forearms, which was definitely not good Disease was easy to pinpoint as objectively bad But the fact that being thin was supposed to be good seemed irrelevant, since in past eras it would have been better to be plump It was hard to rest on any single aspect for reassurance, knowing