Toward the end of high school, my step-brother bought a tanning bed. It lay on the carpet next to his regular bed like a smooth white spaceship. At that point he was working on his amateur bodybuilding and modeling career, so purchasing a tanning bed seemed an obvious and necessary step. For the rest of my family, however, the bed’s necessity was questionable. Ben, you’re moving to Los Angeles in three months, we reminded him. Yeah, but I need this…to be ready.
After a while, he started to look as if he were from another planet. He had the highlights, muscles, and improbably dark skin of some imported junior Vegas bouncer—stranded, confused and alone in the gritty and endless Massachusetts winter.
The rest of us celebrated our freckled, WASPy paleness, slapping on sun block even at twilight, and since Ben did, in fact, move to Los Angeles three short months after purchasing the bed, we were faced with the problem of what to do with it. Eventually it was sold for a fraction of its original price to one of Ben’s friends—a member of the Wesleyan Class of ’04, coincidentally. But it remained in our hearts the ultimate symbol of vanity, superficiality, and excess.
How funny, then, that I found myself skipping class on a gray Wednesday afternoon to lie in a tanning bed at Cover Girl, the beauty salon next to Destinta.
“I’d like one tan, please,” I told the woman at the desk. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow before asking if I had ever been tanning before. I had not. I then filled out a form certifying that my skin is not so white that I would automatically give myself cancer—which of course it is, and of course I would—but I lied a little so she would let me in. Do you freckle? Absolutely. Do you burn easily? Of course. Do you tan easily? Well, no, I don’t tan at all. She stared at me while I filled out the form, thinking either it’s about time, sweetheart, or why on earth are you here?
The form completed, she set me up in one of the tanning closets with a hard candy and a towel. She shut the door, gave me a T minus 3-minute countdown to take off my clothes and put on the tanning goggles. I did all this in about thirty seconds, then lay quietly in the cold bed for two and a half minutes. Finally the bed turned on. It was warm and purple and comforting, and smelled vaguely of popcorn.
I only tanned for the minimum time—five minutes—as it was my first visit. Even so, I imagined the minutes would be long and scorching, stretching interminably into the afternoon. The minutes, however, were over almost immediately. I pushed the top up, blinked sleepily, and swung my legs over the side. I sat there for a moment, naked and happy. A chart on the wall encouraged me to “Break Through [My] Tanning Plateau” and showed a sweaty man gazing down at his heroically tanned abs. I just wanted to get back in, but unfortunately there were other tanners waiting.
After I got dressed and left Cover Girl, I looked closely at myself in the car mirror. I had some light freckles and felt tingly. My body was warm, and I had burned my boobs, but I wouldn’t realize that until much later. I felt guilty; I’d been a tanning hypocrite.
I wouldn’t go so far to say my stepbrother had the right idea, or that he ever should have thought about purchasing that tanning bed, but he certainly was on to something. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Cover Girl, but I did keep these neat goggles.
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