I went to a tanning salon. Obviously I’m ashamed of myself, but it was that or fill in my tax return. I thought to myself, “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to go to a tanning salon!” Because that’s the kind of thing you do on a Saturday in January…. Obviously. The salon in question was almost empty – there was just some skinny-looking gay bloke hiding in a booth around the back and the one-hundred-year-old grandfather who minded the counter.
My choice – “Fifteen minutes of irradiated cancer-creation, please!” The crumbly old geeker looked at me like I’d landed from space – as if it was possible that I’d accidentally just asked him for his prostate in a jar without realising it. “I should think ten minutes would be enough for you,” he murmured with eyebrows wiggling. So I grudgingly conceded and stood in my light-giving booth like it was some kind of alien hot-stuff storage-tank on my way to Planet Sex. Afterwards I felt disappointed. I looked in the mirror and thought, “Well that didn’t do any good”.
It wasn’t until later that evening that I was forced to realise that – evidently while I wasn’t looking – someone had decided to colour in all of my body with a pink flourescent highlighter pen. It took another twenty-four hours for the upper layers of my facial epidermis to emigrate in search of more fertile farmlands and less harsh weather conditions… But it doesn’t matter. There’s no need for anyone to ever find out that I secretly look like a cross between The English Patient and a recently broiled lobster underneath my shiny shirts. And if anyone asks I can just say, “I don’t really want to talk about it…”
Categories