Sunday May 29, 2005
Skin Color is the Only Issue
[Contributed by Steve Klotz]
Yessssssssssss finally we’re getting real south Florida weather: the sunny, hot, and humid stuff I like.
Makes me sweat just blinking. When an average white man from the frozen northeast can get himself a serious, cutting-edge dark tan . . .
Me, I do the beach from 10 to 4. I alternate 60 minutes dorsal, 6o ventral. You can feel the skin sizzle about hour 3—that’s when I know I’m making progress . . .
I’m listening in at a meeting of a Tanorexics Support Group. Like starving anorexic skeletons who perceive their own emaciated bodies as hidoeusly fat and bloated, these are people who, no matter how many hours they’re out there roasting their asses in sweltering sunshine, no matter how many shades they darken, swear that it’s never enough. One day – one hour – out from under the rays and they think they’re paler than Casper’s ass and nothing anybody says convinces them otherwise. They need the burn, the carcinogenic glow, the stiff leathery skin to feel completely alive.
One time I remember going straight from the dermatologist’s office to the beach after he’d burned off half a dozen skin cancers from my forehead and shoulders. It was painful seeing those white spots. I had to get them to match the rest of me right away!
Holy melted cocoa butter. And this is just one meeting, maybe 20 people, in a community of Ra-worshipers estimated in the thousands. They’re all ages, all sizes, both genders, and some are nudists (imagine the guys applying suntan lotion to themselves. Wait. Maybe don’t). I’ve attended neighborhood association meetings in Little Haiti with paler people.
This group meets weekly at night (of course) in the lobby of a skin care clinic whose name I can’t reveal. Sorry. But you can find your own group, if you want one, by checking out sunbathers. After a while it’s obvious who’s got a problem. Heard of Gay-dar? Use your Ray-dar.
Mmmmmm. Feel the burn.
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great site Alesh
jay
and the irony here is that tonight these gringa’s are going to compete with each other over c…
Hot-buttered Gringa.
It’s not just breakfast food.
Living in NJ you’d think sunburn isn’t an issue but you’d be very wrong indeed. This time of year the morning fog lifts around noon and many days it leaves the locals cooking in a brillant June sun. Since most of us are still snow white from the long winter sunburn this time of year is rampant along the So. Jersey coast.
These are sound reasons (1) not to live in Jersey, and (2) not to be a white person. What’s the sense of living the life of a white person if you can’t bake buns in the sun all year ‘round? Only way I’m not browner than bark by early June is if I’m deader than Siegried and Roy’s career.
I’m out nude on Haulover every weekend. I love the sensation of sun sizzling my skin, and the blast of red heat baking my body. I love drinking cold liquids and sweating them out. I love the FEEL of the sun pressing me down. The tan is wonderful, too, but it’s like what rich people say about earning money—it’s not the reason you do it, it’s just a way of keeping score.
how pedestrian-