I am turning the color of a coffee bean and it is not by choice. Being overly tan in February is like having a lot of tattoos or an eye patch and people are drawn to you and want to ask questions. I love to swim, I love to swim in the ocean and when I'm not swimming I am walking the beach, rhythmical waves like a mantra breathing in and out of my tired brain. The rest of the time I stay huddled under a sugar shack-looking kind of structure with 30 SPF slathered over my wrinkly hide, but it's not enough. My swimming fetish puts me directly under the tropical sun way too much. And there's only so much Banana Boat can do and I inherited an olive Mediterranean skin tone prone to dark pigment, how that occurred with my middle-euro Germanic heritage I'll never figure out and I just keep getting darker.
When I was fifteen I was in Chicago attempting to cross a busy avenue and my father was waiting on the other side. It was late August and I was deeply tanned and as I ran two black men whistled at me. "Hah!" Sonny emoted. "They think you're black!" It never occurred to my father that black men would whistle at a white girl.
I would never schedule an appointment with a dermatologist the week after a Caribbean vacation but unfortunately I have a weepy, icky thing on my leg and I don't want to talk about it. There will be a lecture and I will roll my eyes and direct my mind somewhere else. Dermatologists are the whitest people on this earth. My last derma doc was black lace Irish with riveting blue eyes, black blue hair and skin like the underbelly of a fish. He was a Green Bay Packer fan but that is not the reason I left him. Our insurance carrier got pissy at negotiation time and heaved all of the company customers over to a new medical provider. My new gal is a strawberry blond, green-eyed porcelain beauty all white and peachy skin and I will be hearing her tsks-tsks way too soon.
It's time to go home. Vacation means inhabiting a hotel room with one toilet and a man who farts and snorts like a brontosaurus and I am accustomed to a townhouse with three bathrooms. I get nervous lying around doing nothing. I need a project, a productive process to ignite my synapses, a museum or cathedral to explore and Jamaica is noticeably vacant on those. Hopefully I will remember to drive on the right side of the street when I return.
When I was fifteen I was in Chicago attempting to cross a busy avenue and my father was waiting on the other side. It was late August and I was deeply tanned and as I ran two black men whistled at me. "Hah!" Sonny emoted. "They think you're black!" It never occurred to my father that black men would whistle at a white girl.
I would never schedule an appointment with a dermatologist the week after a Caribbean vacation but unfortunately I have a weepy, icky thing on my leg and I don't want to talk about it. There will be a lecture and I will roll my eyes and direct my mind somewhere else. Dermatologists are the whitest people on this earth. My last derma doc was black lace Irish with riveting blue eyes, black blue hair and skin like the underbelly of a fish. He was a Green Bay Packer fan but that is not the reason I left him. Our insurance carrier got pissy at negotiation time and heaved all of the company customers over to a new medical provider. My new gal is a strawberry blond, green-eyed porcelain beauty all white and peachy skin and I will be hearing her tsks-tsks way too soon.
5 comments:
In the first century CE an Armenian leader by the name of Armen lead 30,000 horsemen into Bavaria to battle Roman troops; as a result many Bavarians have Armenian blood running through their veins, resulting in darker skin tones. Maybe we're related to the Kardashians.
You might be but I'm not.
I was going to say something important here regarding this subject, but Joshua just walked in with a bag of one dozen tacos, and I lost my train of thought. Tonight he is my favorite son. :-)
tex-mex rules.
We will all feast on tacos when Bruce Jenner goes beserk, murders his family and us long lost relatives will get all the dough.
Post a Comment