tan like me

I’m constantly on a quest to be edgy and cool, mostly because I'm neither of those things, and yet I think I should be in order to live happily. It was while navigating the cruel waters that are middle school that I first realized I needed outside help in order to gain acceptance and notoriety. Naturally, being the nifty kid that I was, I purchased a book titled, “How To Be Popular In The 6th Grade”, to do so.

It should be mentioned that I bought it from one of those Scholastic book orders. The day it arrived in my Language Arts class, I scrambled to the teachers desk, hoping to God I'd get to it before some one else, having figured out a bit too late that buying an instructional guide to aid in the search for popularity did not a 'cool kid' make...

Evidently I was not only a loser, but a slow one at that. The prettiest (and by default) most popular girl in the gifted program snickered as she read the cover, handing over the pink and white paperback with a condescending smile, “Good luck.”

Looking back, I don’t have to think hard as to why my efforts to be adored in middle school were in vain. It wasn’t my penchant for overalls, or my overbite. It wasn’t my obnoxious, know-it-all, only child demeanor. Nope. I'm sure it was my whiteness.

It’s because I’m pasty, and pale, and generally just not attractive- and we all know that’s the first step in being cool. Sure, you can have a dazzling personality that draws people in, or a substantial expendable income, but those take work. Good looks, including skin tone, are genetic.

Except, that is, when you tan. Screw mother nature! To hell with lackluster melanin levels! In high school I discovered that I could be cool, and popular, and most of all- not white.

Not that I have something against my heritage, or anything that legitimately unfortunate. I’m fine with the whole, ‘My family’s from Wales and Germany, and I’m distantly related to William the Conqueror’- blah, blah, blah nonsense. I mean, it’s whatever.

What does bother me, though, is my porcelain exterior. Now I know, again, perhaps this isn't the most ‘PC’ way to think. I’ve heard the Glamour/Cosmo/Oprah/Barney mantras, be happy with who you are, love what you’ve got, tanning will give you cancer, etc. But how am I to be happy with this glow in the dark shell? How am I to be happy when in every picture, I look blotchy, and sick- when I am in perfect (maybe drunk) health? Grayscale and sepia look artsy for two to three Facebook albums at best.

And, to be perfectly honest, while there is a part of me that thinks I'd rather be tan now than live past my 30's melanoma-free, there's a bigger part of me that's convinced that I will most definitely get skin cancer should I continue to bake myself in well-lit, plexiglass booths.

It was this fear of eminent death that drove me to Island Sun Tanning two days before my 21st birthday. Well, the fear, and my jeep. What was supposed to be a 20 minute pit stop turned into an hours worth of agony and self degradation at the hands of a swarthy Mystic Tan.

Oh, the shame.

I couldn’t figure out the damn booth. I stood inside, disrobed, my hands and feet covered in some sort of petroleum jelly excrement, waving my arms frantically in front of the sensors I thought were supposed to sense my presence, but they didn’t realize I was there. I looked around, a sitting duck inside a drafty, blue-hued, clothing-optional phone booth.

I refused to even consider wiping off the slime, dressing myself- complete with socks and shoes, only to miserably trudge out to the counter girl, a look of embarrassment upon my face. Especially after I’d already told her I was perfectly capable of ‘figuring it out’. I was college educated, for Christ’s sake. If an orange 16 year old with peroxide seeping through her skull could man the booth, I was surely competent.

Except, evidently, I wasn’t.

I pushed open the Mystic Tan door, thoroughly disgusted with the entire process, not to mention myself. I stood for a moment, thinking that if I spent enough time in the room, she’d come to me, wondering what the hold up was. How many hours could that take? I thought. She seemed rather distracted by the new issue of Cosmo, which I’d received in the mail weeks before.

Considering A Big Ash and I were to meet her roommates at Chili’s in a half an hour, I decided Jessica’s SSR would have to wait. I wiped off my feet and hands, dreading the walk of ignorance I was about to embark upon. I shook out the jeans that I’d haphazardly tossed aside in my hurry to be bronzed. How brazen I’d been to think the next time I wore them I’d be as sun kissed as a non-white person...

Glaring at the booth one more time, I threw my denim back to the floor. Out smarted by a tanning booth?! Not I!

I marched, or rather- stepped, as it was just a foot away, back into the booth. Waving my hand in front of the sensor, the air shifted.

A beeping started. A light flashed. I vaguely remembered that after the first spray, I was supposed to turn, as to not end up like Ross in that one episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.- with four 2’s on the front and nothing on the back. I didn’t want to look like a Jamaican coming and like a Norseman from behind. Not to infer that I look like a man from the back, but rather, I was trying to get across that I didn’t want to be really dark on my front half and white as snow (my natural coloring) on my back. My back looks girlish enough. I think...

I held my breath, only to realize that I didn’t have any air to sustain me for however long the toxins were spewing. Then I thought, toxins!? What? Is that allowed? Are they, the tanning particles, toxic? When can I breathe?

It was then that I started to freak out. If in fact, the tan was dangerous, then people who overused it- ie: the leathery women I saw on the way in- would be impaired, no? Near hyperventilation, I couldn’t think of one plane of existence in which they weren’t impaired. Skin color? Hair color? Sickening I-just-went-tanning stench? Sweet Jesus.

My face scrunched up in despair as the bitterly cold liquid misted over me. I then relaxed my face as best I could, as I didn’t fancy myself looking good with a wrinkly tan. I turned cautiously, exceedingly careful not to slip on the excess glow pooling at my feet.

My feet! Oh, God, I’d wiped the goo off! And my hands!?! Did that matter? Would they suggest it if it had no purpose? Knowing the way they pushed those $85 tan accelerators, I kind of thought they would. On the verge of what I could only assume would be streaky-orange tears, the misting finally subsided. My head cleared. I looked down at myself, relieved to see no orange what-so-ever.

My used, already lived-in outfit clung to my sticky, tanned limbs as I attempted to get dressed. I felt like a dirty shacker, taking a shower the next morning but without a clean change of clothes. I don’t make a habit of wearing soiled garb, but it happens. And it never feels quite right.

Through out dinner, the hand coming to feed my face became slightly darker with every bite. By the time my white chocolate molten lava cake (riddled with raspberries, which I hate, and did not realize from the picture that the dessert included them, or else I wouldn’t have ordered it…) arrived, I was fairly certain I could pass for someone who originally hailed from Nairobi.

When we made our way back to A Big Ash's apartment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was totally born the wrong skin color, I thought. I looked damn good. Sure, it was a little streaky, and yeah, it stained my white shirt a bit… I could have been a cast member on Jersey Shore… and I kind of looked unwashed. I was unwashed, so it wasn’t so surprising. But I looked tan.

Which, of course, made me cool.

And that's all that matters, anyway.