Suntan

<BODY bgcolor="#FFCC00" background="imgs/bg2.gif" text="#FFCC00" link="#FFCC00" alink="#FFFFFF" vlink="#FFCC00"> <table height="100&" cellspacing=6 cellpadding=6> <tr><td align=left valign=top><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="1" height="76" border="0"></td></tr> <tr> <td align=left valign=top> <img src="imgs/suntan.gif" width="306" height="51" alt="SUNTAN" border="0"><p> <a href="../../bios/gaitskill.html" target="_top"><font size=2 face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA"><b><i>by Mary Gaitskill</i></b></font></a> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> In the summer of '68 I got my first suntan. I got it not because I wanted to, but because I desperately wanted to overcome my dread of the gaudy "fun" that constituted summer for 14-year-olds, and because I was sick of being ugly. Dread of fun may sound eccentric, but as presented, fun just didn't look like my kind of thing. Fun was a screeching game of volleyball, it was diving into a chlorinated pool head-first, while others screamed and cavorted, it was tormenting a retarded girl until she wept, it was standing around with a bunch of gum-chewing girls twittering over who was cool. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> Even when it didn't involve obvious cruelty, there was something cruel about this "fun" because it absolutely denied any experience outside its squeaking cute self. It was a hopping, skipping pop song cranked up full blast; intensity with the guts stripped out. It made me want to curl up in a ball and put my hands over my ears. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="340" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> But I knew I couldn't go through life that way, and in my heart I didn't want to. As bad as it looked, it was what was happening, and I longed to join in. Getting a tan seemed a logical first step, and besides there was the ugliness factor. Short, bespectacled, flat-chested and generally graceless you could get away with, but put pasty-faced on top of that, forget it. <p><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="400" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> The problem was, tanning seemed pretty arduous. I would look at my sister, supine in the yard in her bathing suit with a wet rag over her eyes, exuding grim concentration, and decide to put it off until tomorrow. Then my best friend moved from her squalid apartment complex into the new "development" where they had a swimming pool everybody could use. Excited by her new opulence, she invited me over to swim. Finally, here was my chance to take part in summer fun. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> At first it seemed okay. There were a lot of people there at the pool, all of them new to the development and, it seemed, vaguely grateful to have the pool bestowed upon them. Girls paraded, guys smirked and loafed, children ran around in their mysterious world of cuteness, adults looked on and dozens of transistor radios emitted song after pop song in a layered slur of preposterous happiness. The Beach Boys, The Archies, The Monkees, The Supremes, 1910 Fruitgum Company, all of them talking about being fine, holding hands, proving their love, sealing it with a kiss and sugar, sugar, sugar. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> Pat and I swam, she competently breast-stroking while I awkwardly dog-paddled. Then we got out and lay there, she looking profoundly satisfied to be warm and secure in the knowledge that she was having fun. Aretha Franklin came on the radio, singing "Respect." Pat said, "I like soul music," and magnanimously conferred approval on the foreign culture thousands of miles away in Detroit. Yeah, I thought. Soul music! The heat was voluptuous and embracing as a friendly animal. I thought, this could be alright. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> I went home after three hours and was so tired I went to sleep immediately after dinner, still deeply warm and satisfied. I woke a few hours later, opening my eyes to a darkened room, yet seeing, in ghastly technicolor, pink, grinning faces, wet limbs, flashing water and grossly vibrant beach balls. My head hurt and it felt huge. I was nauseated and my thoughts were swollen, primary-colored and feverish. Fragments of pop songs tormented me. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> I held my hands up; it seemed they were three times normal size. I became aware that my skin hurt terribly. Aretha sang like a fiend. I got up and went to the bathroom. I discovered that I was red and blistered and that my eyelids were swollen. I leaned over the toilet and puked. I spent the rest of the night in a sun-sick delirium in which the burn and its attendant misery took on the proportions of a disastrous metaphor, a harbinger of mishap and error and disappointment. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> Which, unfortunately, it kind of was. During the next two years, Pat dumped me, I was removed from one school and kicked out of another. I ran away from home, was briefly committed to an institution, was kicked out of another school and ran away again. <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="380" alt="" height="1" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top><font face="GENEVA,ARIAL,HELVETICA" size=2> Many years later, when things were better, I had a boyfriend who, enraptured by the idea of my "midwestern childhood" wanted to look at family pictures. Among others, I showed him one of a neighborhood barbecue depicting tanned, smiling teenagers running around. "Where are you?" he asked. I pointed to the corner in a bespectacled ball, so pale I'm almost invisible. "Oh dear," he said after a pause. "Oh dear." <br><img src="imgs/spacer.gif" width="570" height="1" alt="" border="0"> </td> <td align=left valign=top> <a href="../index.html" target="_top"><img src="imgs/habit.gif" width="155" height="13" alt="back to habit" border="0"></a> </td> </tr> </table> </BODY>