Hi, my name is Jen and I'm tanorexic.
("Hi, Jen!")
It's been thirteen days, twenty-two hours, and seven minutes since I tanned last.
(cue the applause from the crowd gathered on their metal folding chairs)
I started tanning the summer before seventh grade. We'd moved to Indiana from New Jersey the previous year into a house with a pool. I was much more concerned that first year with mastering the front tuck off our diving board so I never really thought about tanning when we moved in. But by the time the Summer of '79 rolled around, I noticed how the older girls in our neighborhood would don their Hang Ten tube tops, slather up in a combination of baby oil and iodine, and bronze themselves in their lawn chairs, an open Peter Frampton album covered in aluminum foil to reflect more rays.
I wanted to be just like them.
(take a bracing sip of my coffee and a drag off my cigarette)
I was awkward back then, all bony angles and frizzy hair with big glasses and a chipped front tooth that had yet to experience the magic of cosmetic dentistry. But with a tan? I was literally (and figuratively) golden.
After I finished my chores (and caught that day's episode of The Price Is Right, of course) I'd head out to the pool and spend my day alternating between floating face down on a raft to get my back dark, and laying on a lawn chair with my straps pulled off my shoulders to even up my front. I knew I'd made good progress when my nose blistered and my skin radiated heat through my clothes. Having to use the Solarcaine my mom kept in the fridge next to my dad's extensive collection of spicy mustards was like a badge of honor.
(crowd nods, some feet shuffle)
I hated winter because I'd get so pale again. And nothing was more depressing than when all the little hairs on my arms turned from blond back to black. I'd heard that movie stars had special little lamps they could sit under in order to maintain their tans, but such extravagance was well outside the non-existent means of a teenager in Huntington, IN. So I'd wait for summer, the only time I ever felt pretty in my tawny skin. And mourn whenever I saw the ghosts of tan lines that never quite faded on my chest and back.
(swirl coffee dregs in cup)
There was no high as great as the feeling of kicking back in a lawn chair, rays beating down just hard enough to make sweat rise through my thin sheen of SPF 0 Hawaiian Tropic oil, Billy Joel playing softly from the transistor radio at my side. I loved when it was so bright all I could see was white when I shut my eyes and faced the sun
(exhale, smoke curling around the low ceiling of this church basement)
My sun salutations went on through middle school and high school and during college, I did my best to arrange employment around my extensive tanning schedule. Each year, I'd leave campus with skin the color of a pitcher of cream and I'd return an amber goddess. My confidence was directly proportional to my amount of visible melanin, yet my time to shine was short-lived, gone by Halloween.
(drop cigarette in cup, light another and inhale deeply)
Then they invented the tanning bed and put them in every strip mall in America. And you all know what that means. What had been a one-season habit suddenly became a way of life.
(crowd murmurs sympathetically)
My best friend Carol - who used to freckle in the sun, the poor dear - would layer herself in PABA and lecture me about the damage I was doing to my skin. "Jeni," she'd say, "Your skin is going to look like a handbag by the time you turn forty." "Pfft," I'd reply. "Who cares? What's important is I look good NOW. Plus, by the time I'm forty, not only will they be able to cure sun damage, I'll be able to take my flying car to the doctor's office. And besides, I can stop any time I want."
(crowd laughs and exchanges weary, knowing looks)
But I couldn't stop. Not only did I lay out whenever I could, I supplemented my burnished glow with year-round sessions at a salon, sometimes going every single day in a month. And I knew I'd reached my goal in the pursuit of copper-colored perfection when the woman at the Bobbi Brown counter had to sell me foundation made for African American women.
Success. Sweet, sunburned success.
Yet now I'm almost forty.
(inhale deep and long, exhale twin plumes of smoke from my nostrils)
And I finally realize my skin looks like a handbag. When I woke up two weeks ago and counted my age spots, I said to my splotchy reflection, "Never again." I stopped tanning cold turkey and I sought redemption.
(bow head, holding onto sides of podium to steady self before continuing)
So I went to the Avanti Clinic on North Ave on bended knee, begging, "Please, help me. There's hatching around my eyes, creases on my lips, and my forehead looks just like Gordon Ramsay's. I have hyper pigmentation and discoloration, parentheses around my mouth, and elevens between my brows. Fix me." Kristi, the aesthetician, looked at me long and hard. "It's not too late. I can help you. But you have to stop tanning or nothing I do will work."
"I will," I promised. And I meant it.
("Amen," someone calls from the back row of the seats)
So I've started the long road to recovery with weekly microdermabrasion sessions and chemical peels. The microdermabrasion crystals feel like being pelted with beach sand on a windy day and the burn of the harsh acid is strangely reminiscent of sunburns past. The slight ache it causes is almost soothing. Next week I meet with the neurologist to begin the process of injecting deadly toxins under the surface of my skin with a needle in order to lessen the creases, yet I'm not penitent.
Rather, I feel this is my penance.
("Bring it home, sister," says the session's leader)
Still, I want to tan. I want to be brown so badly I can taste it. I find myself driving past Palm Beach Tan on Clybourn ten times a day, even though it's completely out of the way. I have such an urge to hover around their doors, asking people, "So, did you try the Erogline 600 bed with the aromatherapy? What did you think of the molded plastic seat? Pretty comfortable, right?" But I won't. Because I can't.
(take one final drag before tossing second butt in the cup)
I guess I'm glad I've stopped tanning before the damage becomes more than just cosmetic. But every day it's a struggle, hopefully though when I'm done paying for my new face, it will have been worth it.
(sigh loudly)
I'll say it once and I'll say it loud - I'm pale and I'm proud. Thank you. Thank you all for listening and for your support. God bless.
(exit podium to applause and hugs as I take my seat)
