Last weekend I worked in our yard and garage for several hours and found myself sporting a mottled sunburn. Heaven knows I'm committed to being evenly colored; I was therefore intrigued when I found my business accommodations the following evening were situated next to a Sun Tan City.
I gave up tanning beds a while back on account of I am closing in on 50 and have just now developed a healthy fear of skin cancer. Better late than never, I suppose, although I may be closing the barn door after a long-departed horse.
Anyhoo, I decided to investigate the process by which one receives sunless, or "spray" tanning. What could be the harm? I thought. As luck would have it, they were having a City Special on sunless tanning...since I was a business traveler, far from home, I decided to take the leap and go for it.
I was a tad ill-informed on the front end, although in retrospect it all seems pretty obvious. After the bubbly teenager locked my money away in the register, THEN she proceeded to show me the tanning booth and give me instructions.
I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me that I would be buck naked inside this plastic tube, but when she told me I would need to take off my clothes and put on a hair net, I began to have misgivings. She then walked me through the various poses one must hold during their session in order to gain the most even tan possible and avoid unsightly, tell-tale paint lines.
Perhaps one day she will recover from the shock of me laughing loudly in her face that I was supposed to hold an Egyptian princess pose in my birthday suit. Worse, I had to do it twice - once facing left and then again facing right. When not walking like an Egyptian, I was to stand with my legs shoulder-width apart and palms facing down, as if to launch myself like a rocket towards the heavens.
I was literally wiping tears of laughter while she explained the application of barrier cream to all nooks and crannies that I didn't want to have tanned - palms, knuckles, soles of my feet, crevices between fingers and toes. Just the name "barrier cream" made me giggle.
Yet despite the hilarity of the whole thing, I was undaunted. I had paid my money and by golly, I was going to get me a tan!
She closed the door on her way out, and I dropped trou. Having slathered my hands and feet in barrier cream, I donned my head covering and stepped into the tanning cylinder. With great trepidation, I pressed the "start" button and prepared for...
OH MY GOOD LORD THAT'S COLD AND YOU JUST SPRAYED IT IN MY FACE!!! AAAAACK! THAT'S SO COLD!!! COLD!!! WET!!! COLD!!!
Then some hateful remote voice told me to turn and do the first pose. I felt like an idiot, but I followed instructions...all the while keeping an eye out for the hidden camera that HAS to be in there somewhere.
What felt like 30 minutes later (but was probably more like 3), I stepped out of the Tube of Tan and inspected the fruits of my efforts. Meh. Kind of slimy and smelly, but not particularly tan. Malibu Barbie had told me at the outset that my "color" wouldn't develop for a few hours, so I reserved judgment, donned my clothing and returned to the hotel.
Throughout the night, I was awakened on several occasions by an awful smell - only to realize that it was my own flesh.
The following morning, I approached the bathroom mirror with caution...but...TA-DA!!! I was TAN! And not in an awful way at all! I smelled like a chemical plant, but dang I looked GOOD. I showered and proceeded to get dressed for work, and then I noticed IT. Oh no. No, No, NO!
I had a horribly defined, perfectly straight line running from the outside of my wrist to the outside of my elbow. The only way it would've been more obvious was if I took a Sharpie and traced it. There was nothing defensible or potentially natural about it - I couldn't pass it off as just having been still in the sun too long - so I did what any sane woman would do.
I put on long sleeves.
It has taken a few days, but the line and my golden color have faded now and all I have left is a sense of utter humiliation and a really great story. Plus I smell a lot better.
No comments:
Post a Comment