My best friend and self-professed Fan of Tan was beside herself with glee; I imagine it took all her restraint to stop from clawing me down the back in orgasmic delight. "We have to get to the beach now!" she whooped, as I grudgingly hoisted my bags over my shoulders. What was I going to do with 20 pounds of redundant and wholly irrelevant sweaters, sneakers, scarves, and other cool-weather clothes for the next two weeks, and more importantly, how in the world would I be able to stay out of the sun without jeopardizing a ten-year friendship?
***
As a young and trusting child, the countless evils of ultra-violet rays was as much a part of my education as were multiplication tables, spelling tests and poorly-depicted still-life fruit. My mother frequently compared the pigmentation marks on her otherwise-flawless skin with my childish freckles and made a tsk-ing sound with her tongue; a sharp click that echoed in my head and one I quickly learned to fear more than the sun itself. My tell-tale rosy cheeks were a dead giveaway of the few extra minutes spent in the sun chasing squirrels around the school yard or indulging in a game of hopscotch, and I would duck my head down in guilt and scurry into my room as she stood watching, arms akimbo.
Family holidays were lavish and luxury, yet not without its sacrifice. My brother and I were slathered in a variety of sickly-smelling sunscreen that remained white no matter how long you waited. Dripping in Banana Boat or just plain mashed bananas, we would tear around the pool like gleeful little ghouls, little rivulets of sweat tracing paths down the sticky white lotion. The burns we suffered had strange streak marks. "I told you so," my mother would chide, followed by an honorary click of tongue, as she rubbed some calming lotion into our raw skin. We writhed and squealed, peeling out of our skins like blotchy red snakes.
The experiences were painful enough to put me off suntanning for most of my teenage years. While others were out kicking a ball around the field and getting their dose of Vitamin D, I stuck to indoor activities, characteristically nerdy and 'un-cool' such as table-tennis, badminton, Drama Club and Choir. Before I began the ultimate Leader of Losers however, it became hip to be pale. All across Asia, women had taken up the notion that fairness was equal to beauty, and whitening creams, gels and lotions became de rigeur. Hailing from a naturally fair-skinned family, people seemed to be envious of our light complexions and bemoaned the hours and dollars they would have to spend to have snowy skin. My sisters and I were not fussed -- we continued to apply our daily SPF as had been taught religiously to us by our mother, and bothered with little else.
***
Here in Plastic-Sunny-Delight-Cali on the other, there was no bottle of SPF large enough to help me avoid turning a few shades deeper. Everywhere I turned, the bronzed and glistening bodies of the taut screamed out to me -- being pale just would not cut it. This was Hollywood, the epicenter of perfection, and the only sort of inverse proportion mathematics one did was: the paler the skin, the more bouncers ignored you. After feeling like an over-boiled chicken for most of the day, I decided that embracing a tan would be the ultimate act of independence and rebellion, and would allow me to stake my claim as an adult once and for all. I trumped this loudly as we drove toward Santa Monica beach, and my friend nodded encouragingly as she readied the tanning lotion and pointed out available parking spaces I had missed. Evidently, everything else I had done in the last four years -- renting my own place, buying my own car, doing groceries, getting a degree and so on; that counted for naught.I nearly gave up the moment my toes touched the scorching sun -- "It's like walking on hot coals!"
I did a little dance on the grass to cool the burning soles of my feet. Only Indian gurus, in the height of religious fervor, did this. They also stuck themselves in the face with steel poles.
"Stop being such a baby; you'll get used to it!" My friend strode forward purposefully, barefoot. All nerve endings must have been lasered off by this point, I thought bitterly to myself. The only response I was capable of was "I'm not a camel!"
Try, try again. When you get knocked down. What doesn't kill you. I mumbled a lot of half-arsed, motivational mantras under my breath, most of which I could not remember in entirety, as I half-leapt and half-ran toward where she was flapping out our over-priced beach blankets. I suggested moving somewhere 'shadier' but the words had barely left my mouth before I was given a stare so chilly even my feet felt better.
Defeated, I plop down onto my blanket. There was no turning back now, so I ignored my churning stomach and the urge to scream as I yanked my top off. Half a bottle of SPF 100 sunscreen later, I was ready for war. I lay back gingerly and covered my face with a magazine to escape the squinting sting of sunlight in my eyes.
"Better now?" My friend's voice floated overhead, tinged with bemusement.
"Oh, yes. Much." I am a terrible liar.
“You’re missing out you know.”
“On what, exactly?”
“Hotties everywhere!”
I sighed.
“One thing at a time, all right?”
***
The first 30 minutes were unaccountably hellish, both literally and figuratively. Never in the last ten years of my life had I willingly and knowingly put myself in such extreme discomfort for no reason other than to fit into an ill-conceived notion of beauty. Beads of perspiration broke out on my forehead -- from the burning sensation on my skin or the stress, I could no longer tell. All I could think about was skin cancer, and the way moles could mutate into giant tumors, and what my mother would say – alarm bells were going off at incredible decibel levels in my head as my epidermis screamed for relief. Something, anything, they pleaded. This is too much abuse for us!
As we approached the tail-end of our trip, I began to get sloppy. After one particularly exhausting day on Hermosa Beach, I was simply too tired to care and collapsed, dead-asleep for a few hours under the noon-day sun.
I woke with a start.
"Wow. That looks pretty bad." My friend peered over the top of her aviators down at my belly.
I felt the pain before I even saw it and braced myself. I sat up slowly and looked down.
“Fuck.” It was all I could say. My mind was a blank of horror.
"I think those are called splash marks..." She comments, squinting a little closer at my festering stomach.
"Oh my god, oh my god. Why didn't you wake me up!" I moan. All I saw when I looked down was dead skin curling up from where my chest had suffered what looked like third-degree burns. The 'skin cancer leads to death' mantra followed by the clashing of cymbals began to flash through my mind again like an emergency beacon.
"Relax, it'll go away soon."
"How soon is soon, exactly?"
"I don't know, maybe a few months?"
"A few months!?"
***
Six months down the road, the story of my kaleidoscopic, tie-dye skin still amuses friends. We laugh about the experience and the toxic shock that my ‘virgin’ skin must have undergone. The Californian tan has since faded, but the memories have not. The trip, the peals of laughter and fuzzy mishaps remain in my memories and journals, as much as my ongoing love affair with the sun remains in my cells. The friends who knew me during my years in college and before are surprised by my sudden affinity for tanned skin, but they laugh it off as another one of Mary’s newly-acquired interests, as we spend a lazy day smoking by the pool, our faces lifted toward the sun.
Oh, and my mother never did mention a word about my tan – she merely said I looked thinner.
The first 30 minutes were unaccountably hellish, both literally and figuratively. Never in the last ten years of my life had I willingly and knowingly put myself in such extreme discomfort for no reason other than to fit into an ill-conceived notion of beauty. Beads of perspiration broke out on my forehead -- from the burning sensation on my skin or the stress, I could no longer tell. All I could think about was skin cancer, and the way moles could mutate into giant tumors, and what my mother would say – alarm bells were going off at incredible decibel levels in my head as my epidermis screamed for relief. Something, anything, they pleaded. This is too much abuse for us!“I think the sun is frying my brains,” I announced, whipping the magazine off my face and sitting up abruptly. What I really wanted to shriek was “Retreat! Retreat!” but I did not want to appear cowardly. My friend rolled over and shruged. “Let’s hit the water.”
That thought had not occurred to me. What a fine idea!
The cool, salty surf water on my broiling skin brought instant, giddy relief. Surely that was steam rising off my over-heated body? It was such an intense feeling of pleasure that I knew I was a goner – the beach was home and I had found Ra. Signed, sealed and delivered. Tanning had found a new convert.
That thought had not occurred to me. What a fine idea!
The cool, salty surf water on my broiling skin brought instant, giddy relief. Surely that was steam rising off my over-heated body? It was such an intense feeling of pleasure that I knew I was a goner – the beach was home and I had found Ra. Signed, sealed and delivered. Tanning had found a new convert.
***
The next week saw us moving from one eclectic Californian city to another at turbo speed, racing through the state as if there were some important deadline to meet at the end of the next highway, weaving through dirt-cheap (or just dirty) hostels while picking up travel tips from other backpackers. The palm-lined boulevards began to look the same; we couldn't tell if we were in Rodeo Drive or the Gaslamp Quarter. There were shirtless Turks touting their pedi-cabs and offering free kisses, and failed celebrity sightings. The buildings began to fuse together as one moldy grey lump. How many more Starbucks and Verizon Wireless billboards would we encounter? Exhausted by the mash-ups, hook-ups and fuck-ups, we fell into a deep reverie at whichever beach was the closest.
It was only while we lay side-by-side, feeling the warm sand shift and align itself beneath our backs, that we could find our voices. After a near decade of friendship, four of which I had spent flying in and out of the country, my best friend was finally sharing the same space with me and there was so much to discuss, dreams to plan, memories to reminisce and fears to rationalize. The crisp ocean breeze, mingling with the smell of salt and the sounds of summer leisure and the warm sun overhead, we were hard pressed not to feel as though the world was ours for the taking.
As our dreams grew, our sunscreen usage shrunk – it was finally at zero after being left forgotten, buried at the bottom of a knapsack under piles of unwashed clothing and socks. Neither of us could be bothered to dig around in the mess for it, and our financial situation had become so dire that the $2 for the kid-sized bottle was better saved on other necessities. Only wimps needed sunscreen anyway, we harrumphed. In order to ensure optimum results, I mimicked the expert’s every move -- when she flipped over, so did I. After years of waiting for me to catch on, she had the entire rotisserie-chicken-rotation down to an exact science and I was only too keen to follow her example.
As we approached the tail-end of our trip, I began to get sloppy. After one particularly exhausting day on Hermosa Beach, I was simply too tired to care and collapsed, dead-asleep for a few hours under the noon-day sun.I woke with a start.
"Wow. That looks pretty bad." My friend peered over the top of her aviators down at my belly.
I felt the pain before I even saw it and braced myself. I sat up slowly and looked down.
“Fuck.” It was all I could say. My mind was a blank of horror.
"I think those are called splash marks..." She comments, squinting a little closer at my festering stomach.
"Oh my god, oh my god. Why didn't you wake me up!" I moan. All I saw when I looked down was dead skin curling up from where my chest had suffered what looked like third-degree burns. The 'skin cancer leads to death' mantra followed by the clashing of cymbals began to flash through my mind again like an emergency beacon.
"Relax, it'll go away soon."
"How soon is soon, exactly?"
"I don't know, maybe a few months?"
"A few months!?"
Six months down the road, the story of my kaleidoscopic, tie-dye skin still amuses friends. We laugh about the experience and the toxic shock that my ‘virgin’ skin must have undergone. The Californian tan has since faded, but the memories have not. The trip, the peals of laughter and fuzzy mishaps remain in my memories and journals, as much as my ongoing love affair with the sun remains in my cells. The friends who knew me during my years in college and before are surprised by my sudden affinity for tanned skin, but they laugh it off as another one of Mary’s newly-acquired interests, as we spend a lazy day smoking by the pool, our faces lifted toward the sun.
Oh, and my mother never did mention a word about my tan – she merely said I looked thinner.
1 comment:
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! oh man... this is so funny. hahaha! love your descriptions! they always paint a very clear cartoonish picture in my mind.
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