Spray Tan
During my second month working at the beauty salon, Mr. Kim came in for a spray tan.
“Have you had a spray tan before?” I asked, as he stood at the counter filling in the new client forms. It had been almost ten years, and I could see he didn’t recognize me.
“I haven’t,” he said. “But I read the information on the website. I know it’s basically a sugar solution you’ll spray on my skin, which will react with a protein, creating a tanned appearance that develops over 24 hours.”
Mr. Kim dropped his pen and bent down to retrieve it so only his bottom, in pleated khakis, was visible over the counter. Then he hit his head on the corner as he straightened up.
“Ouch! Sharp corner.” He squeezed his eyes closed for a minute and when he opened them there were tears.
He pushed on. “I know that the exact shade of tan I’ll develop depends on the specific proteins in my skin and that dead skin cells give you uneven results. So, I loofaed, as recommended. Now I own a loofa.”
What he’d said about the solution being just sugar wasn’t exactly true, but my boss said it wasn’t too toxic if you only got sprayed a few times.
Once he signed the waiver, I handed him a towel and showed him the changing room and the box of disposable paper G-strings.
“Boy, not much to them, is there?” He laughed shyly.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’ve seen it all before. First room on the left when you’re ready.”
*
I was trained in all of the treatments carried out by the beauty technicians in the salon by then and had recently started taking walk-ins. We often had men come in, although they tended to be gay, especially in that part of Manhattan, and last I heard, Mr. Kim had a wife and a child. He’d been my table tennis teacher in high school. He’d also been my first crush, even though he wasn’t very good-looking and didn’t dress well. But he didn’t feel the need to impress us with his mastery and competence like the other gym teachers, and he’d told us interesting facts in an earnest way that I’d found appealing.
He was older now of course and hadn’t aged very well. He had a pretty big stomach and his hair was thinning. Even so, it was my Mr. Kim, all right. I was glad he hadn’t recognized me; it meant I looked a lot better than I had in high school. Although administering a spray tan was tedious work, it was better than applying lash extensions, bent over a client for several hours gluing tiny mink hairs to each of their eyelashes. And it definitely beat having to perform our popular back, crack, and sack wax package sessions. So even though it was nearly closing time, I was happy to take the appointment.
*
When Mr. Kim entered the treatment room, I was wearing a smock and had the air compressor fired up and the container of tanning solution attached to the hosing. I hung his towel up and directed him to stand on a white plastic drop cloth. He stepped tentatively to the exact center of the plastic and then stood there sheepishly, looking around as if he’d like to put his hands in his pockets if he’d had his pants on.
“That’s great, Mr. Kim.” I handed him goggles and nose plugs. “And I see you’ve applied the barrier cream around your toenails. There was a box of shower caps in the changing room, did you see them?”
Mr. Kim looked embarrassed. “Actually, I was hoping you could tan my head too, where my hair is thinning, so it’s not so obvious.” He leaned over and parted the hair at the top of his head to show me, as if I were a trusted medical professional and not a beautician who technically didn’t have her license yet. I felt embarrassed, then, as I often did, by the futility of life and all the effort it required. And I worried about the results I could deliver, because applying an airbrush spray tan successfully requires artistry, especially around areas where there’s a change in the consistency of the skin, like the anus and areolae. I wondered if it was the same with the scalp.
“I’ll do my best,” I assured him. My ears were becoming cold and tingly, something that always happened when I got nervous. I repeated I am not my thoughts three times in my head, to try to warm them up. “Please insert the nose plugs and put on the goggles,” I instructed, “and we can begin. Remember to hold your breath!”
I moved the dial to the darkest setting and took aim at his bald spot with the spray gun, pulling the trigger in half-second bursts and letting the droplets of tanning solution land in a pattern that I hoped would imitate tiny hairs.
“Some of this is going in your actual hair, but it should wash out.”
“Did you know that every strand of your hair holds a precise record of what you’ve put in your body, and where you’ve been?” Mr. Kim sounded like he had a bad cold with the nose plugs in. “An aspirin will show up in a hair strand test nine hours after you take it. Even atmospheric and elevation changes show up in your hair.” He pinched up a few strands of his fine, black hair between his fingers. “My hike up Breakneck Ridge last weekend is right here. Along with all the ice cream I ate afterwards, waiting for the train back to the city.”
I wondered if he was making it up about the hair strands, because people tend to use lots of details when they’re lying, but he’d always had the strange, true facts. A hair strand test would probably lose me my job, I thought, which was funny, because everything—the Adderall, the micro dosing, the ketamine—it was all in the service of bettering myself.
I moved the dial back down. “Hold your breath again please, I’m going to do your face and neck now.” His hair was cut too short in the front which accentuated his big forehead, and I wanted to tell him that he could transform the proportions of his face just by growing his hair a couple inches longer. My own transformation had happened when I’d left home for college and finally gotten my first flattering haircut, along with a prescription for Accutane and, belatedly, braces. I knew how these things could change a life. I did an extra spray along his cheekbones to try to bring them out and another down the bridge of his big nose.
“Okay, you can remove the goggles and nose plugs now. They’re yours to keep.”
“Thank you,” he said, bending over and placing them neatly at the edge of the plastic sheeting.
“Are you getting tanned for a special event?” I ventured.
“I am actually, I’m going to my college reunion this weekend, down in Austin, Texas. Twenty-five years! Been trying to lose a little weight, and I read that a tan helps with looking thinner. And the gym of course. And I’m doing a cleanse. It’s a good motivator.” He smiled apologetically. “All the upkeep, it’s just what a good life requires now.”
I nodded. I didn’t like to put the focus on myself during treatments, but I had made similar calculations regarding my own self-care. My dental hygiene was three steps now instead of one. Four with the whitening strips. I blow dried and curled my hair each morning by sticking it section by section into a neon pink, handheld, spinning vortex of hot air. And it took me two trips to the store every week to shoplift what I needed for my supplements regimen.
“You basically need about fifty years to get your life set up and all the necessary maintenance in place and then it’s practically over,” I told him. “Are you going to be wearing a bathing suit on the trip? I can also create a more chiseled look for you with the tanning spray.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” He looked alarmed. “There might be a pool at the hotel.”
“This will help take a few pounds off visually.” I aimed the gun again and sprayed back and forth across his chest and over his big stomach. I concentrated on creating a subtle line down the center, starting at his sternum. It would have to be very subtle.
“Are you going by yourself?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m recently divorced, actually. This will be my first time going anywhere, going out, since all of that. And now with everything landing up on social media… You wouldn’t have any tips to help me look better in photos?”
“Absolutely! The owner here does a weekend workshop, Flattering Poses for Fabulous Photos. It’s really popular.” I squinted my eyes to see the abdominal V I was shading in, on the flatter area below his stomach.
Mr. Kim raised his eyebrows. “Strange world we live in. But here I am getting a spray tan. So, what do I do when all the camera phones come out?”
“Well, for close-ups, you’re going to want to place the tip of your tongue on the back of your top teeth, like you’re going to say the word ‘terrible’. This makes your jawline look less flabby and cuts down on turkey wattle. Then you’re going to bring your chin forward, but make sure to keep your shoulders back and down so you don’t make your neck look shorter. Then tilt your head 15 degrees to either side and smile! But keep your lips closed unless you’ve gotten veneers on your teeth, which I don’t think you have. Oh, and don’t forget to ‘smize’.”
“Wow, I’m not sure I can remember all of that.”
“I’ll give you one of the worksheets when we go up front. Remember to also shift your weight from front foot to back so you don’t look wooden, while leaning forward slightly at the waist. That will help take a few pounds off.”
I started in on Mr. Kim’s arms and hands.
“Please hold your arms up and make prayer hands so I can spray them correctly,” I instructed. “Keep your fingers together because the webbing can turn orange.”
Mr. Kim put his hands together and offered them to me. He had huge hands.
“If you can only remember one tip for fabulous photos,” I counseled, “it’s that it all comes down to your eyes. You need a certain gleam that will make people want to know what you’re thinking.” I wondered if the Adderall was making me talk too much, but he was really going to need these tips.
“Here’s something my boss doesn’t know,” I confided. “I used to have a boyfriend who acted in the soaps. He had a signature look he did at the end of every scene, a smoldering look that was one part dawning realization, another part strengthening resolve. He told me that his trick was to gaze into the distance while thinking, ‘I left the oven on,’ then look back at his co-star and think, ‘no I didn’t,’ and then look away once more thinking, ‘oh, yes I did.’ That creates the necessary amount of inner frisson to reach your eyes.”
“I’ll make sure to give that a try,” said Mr. Kim.
I started down his thighs.
“There’s something I wanted to ask while you’re spraying that area,” he said shyly. “My old girlfriend from college is going to be at the reunion and I’m hoping that maybe...” He cleared his throat a few times.
“Would you like to remove the G-string for the most natural-looking tan with no lines?”
Mr. Kim climbed out of the paper G-string and placed it at the edge of the plastic next to his goggles and nose plugs. “I feel pretty silly right now,” he said, standing up slowly.
I took a good look. “Nothing the least bit silly there,” I told him. I asked him to lift his junk out of the way and he took it all onto his massive palm like a waiter carrying a large tray of food. Then I started in on blending a delicate tapering pattern around his groin.
“Thank you,” Mr. Kim said when I stopped spraying. “To be honest, the relationship with my college sweetheart didn’t end so well. I tried emailing her recently and she said she didn’t have happy memories of our time together. I got the impression she didn’t want me to contact her again. I really want it to be perfect the second time around, if we get a chance to start over.”
I knew the importance of a perfect beginning. My ex-boyfriend and I had met when I got locked out of my apartment while I was smoking on my tiny balcony one morning in my bathrobe. I was stuck out there until dark, peeing in a pot plant, until I finally yelled down to a handsome guy in a green newsboy cap under the streetlight on the corner, who happened to look up. I told him where to find the spare key, how to let himself in, come three flights up, and unlock the balcony door. Once he let me into my apartment and I’d used the bathroom, we went back out on the balcony and stayed out there until sunrise. That he wasn’t a creep or a violent felon really added to the fairytale, and three days later we were on a beach in Costa Rica. It wasn’t a great fit in the end—his band stopped gigging and he found my checkbook and bounced a bunch of checks—but that perfect beginning made the relationship seem predestined in a way I’d never forget.
I wanted poor, divorced Mr. Kim, who’d been nice to me in high school, to know this perfect beginning feeling. And I didn’t want him to be disappointed with his tan when he got to Austin. I wondered if I should mention our waxing package. I would give him a flyer when we went up front.
I also thought about this woman who still held his attention after so many years. “What was special about your girlfriend from college?” I asked.
“She was, well, she had a voracious appetite in the bedroom, for starters.” He let out a suppressed little yelp and his face went red beneath the shiny patina of the tanning spray.
“What was she hungry for,” I asked, ears tingling. I was curious to hear how another woman conceived of herself as a sexual being, because there weren’t a lot of signposts for female desire, only many shaming and contradictory warnings. Whatever any of us came up with would likely be awkward or even appalling, or maybe something that seemed like a good idea beforehand but wasn’t, like edible underwear.
“Mostly things to do with vegetables,” he said unhelpfully. And then, after a moment, “I guess it’s kind of pathetic that I still think about her.”
But I didn’t think it was pathetic, that was just how life was. You could get stuck on something for years, circling it fruitlessly until one day it suddenly became something else, without any fanfare. I wondered if maybe my whole life so far had been a slow arc back to Mr. Kim.
At his feet I stopped spraying and put the gun down. “I just need a minute to rest my arm before we start on your back side.” I straightened my arms a few times and rubbed my ears.
“You’re an artist, you deserve a break,” Mr. Kim said. He shifted to his other hand to cup his groin. “Here’s a fun fact for you. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed off half of the one hundred or so billion humans who’ve ever lived?”
“No, I did not know that! That’s scary to think about.”
“Half of the humans who’ve ever lived,” he repeated, and shook his head and laughed in amazement. He had a nice, deep laugh. “But here we are. We’re the lucky half.”
*
I hadn’t forgotten another fact Mr. Kim told us in high school about all the humans who’ve ever lived. “Did you know every single one of us starts our life as female?” he’d said, after a loud jock made some choice comments about the women in our class. There was uncomfortable laughter at this strange information, and Mr. Kim would pay a price for saying it, I knew, because the guys would jeer at him later and be harder to keep in line. “Every human spends their first five or six weeks of life as a female embryo,” he continued, meeting the jock’s hard stare with a smile. Later, I had looked it up and learned that it was indeed true. We were all female first.
*
Mr. Kim had relaxed the hand he had cupping himself as he laughed about the deadly mosquitoes. “Please keep holding everything up and out of the way for another minute or two,” I instructed. “We don’t want to smear the tan on your thighs.”
“Oh sorry, I forgot.” His Adam’s apple rose and fell in embarrassment. “I think I’m sweating a little too, I hope that won’t affect the tan.”
I stuck my head out the door and checked the hall clock with the palm trees on it. My shift was almost over. I was supposed to meet two women from my own college days for dinner. We’d recently struck up a shaky, three-way friendship during an alumni event held in a cheesy bar in midtown. The connection consisted of group-texting each other wellness articles and meeting for dinner every few weeks so they could compare notes on all the efforts they were going through to try and have babies. Unlike them, I didn’t want kids, and technically I hadn’t even graduated from the college. I had gone through a bad patch in my sophomore year and had to leave for a little while, and my campus housing was canceled when I missed a bill payment. All my stuff was put outside my dorm for people to take, and I never went back. The women didn’t know any of that, or they didn’t remember. But as soon as one of them got pregnant, I was sure the friendship would reveal its hollow core.
They had been offended, I knew, when I explained that I didn’t feel a need to create more people, that reproducing seemed at best like hosting an expensive houseguest for eighteen years who wouldn’t want to take your calls when they finally moved out, and at worst, cruel and irresponsible, given the suffering all lives entail. Now that I’d finally gained some mastery over basic life skills, I told them, waving around my second glass of merlot, I didn’t want to start at the beginning again, teaching someone how to eat with utensils and not to poop in the bath. It all just made me think of boreal forests in the Arctic Circle that were burning and the world’s last rhinos that were being picked off one by one and wonder what the billions of humans there already were had accomplished that was worth destroying everything else for.
*
“Do you mind if I make a quick phone call?” asked Mr. Kim. “Only my phone is back in the changing room.” He looked over at the paper G-string. “I’ll do it after.”
“I can go get you your phone,” I offered.
“Would you mind? I hate to ask. I just have to call my mom and remind her to take her pills. I think putting the underwear back on might…”
“It would definitely smear your tan,” I said. “I’ll run and get your phone.”
“Thank you. It’s in my back pants’ pocket.”
In the changing room, his khaki pants lay carefully folded on the chair. His loafers were placed side by side on the floor under the chair, and his button-down shirt was fully buttoned and hung on a hanger. I picked up one of the sleeves and held it up to my nose. The shirt had the comforting smell of fabric softener. Then I pulled on the sleeve, so that the shirt hung just slightly off-center. I wondered if this tiny adjustment might change the rest of his day somehow, in ways I would never know.
I unfolded his khakis and a pair of light blue boxers, also folded, fell out onto the floor. I tried to fold them up the same way he’d left them so he wouldn’t know they’d fallen out. In his pants pockets I found some twenties and a subway card secured neatly together with a silver money clip, a tube of Carmex, and his phone. The screen lit up when I slid it out, showing his screensaver, a photo of an otter floating on its back. Its front paws were clasped together, its small face with the black teddy bear nose raised out of the water towards the camera as if it was surprised to find itself an object of interest. There were notifications showing three missed calls from someone named Destiny.
*
When I returned, Mr. Kim had stepped off the plastic and was reading the ingredients on the gallon jug of tanning solution. “I guess it’s not a type of sugar,” he said. “Did I get that wrong?”
“It’s related to a sugar molecule. Pretty harmless. Plus, it’s got the bronzer in it so I can see where I’ve sprayed. It’s a good brand.”
“I believe you.”
I handed him his phone.
“This will just take a minute. Sorry about my…” He gestured at his crotch with an expansive movement. “I’d put a towel on but…”
“…that would smear the tan!” we cried in unison.
Mr. Kim made his call, seeming unsure whether to turn his backside in my direction or to remain facing me, and opted to stand there shifting slightly one way and then the other.
There was an emotional-sounding exchange in another language and then some yelling from the female voice on the line. He seemed to curl inside himself at the raised voice, one hand hovering over his groin, as if to shield me and himself from the onslaught.
I checked my own phone to give him some privacy, hoping one of the alumni women had texted to cancel dinner. Nothing.
“All done,” said Mr. Kim.
“Did she take her pills?”
“She said she’d think about it.” He looked sad. He bent over and put his phone down carefully next to the G-string, goggles and nose plugs, all in a neat line.
I tilted my head to one side and considered Mr. Kim. I generally appreciated good style and what it said about the extra effort someone made to show up for life. The small but exuberant details, all the decisions, coalescing to create a unique package. I’d had an on-again, off-again Sicilian boyfriend who would pair a turquoise Hermès scarf that had belonged to his grandmother with a tattered orange sweatshirt, or meticulously cuffed velvet maroon pants and suspenders with old work boots. I would not have thought to combine these items. His style was so specific to him that it felt revelatory—sprezzatura, he called it—and I was captivated by the sense of possibility it opened up.
Mr. Kim didn’t have any of that. And yet, I thought. And yet. His conscientious orderliness, his careful blandness, I saw, was his own signature, showing just as much quirk of personality, in his own way. Did other people stop to notice this in him? I thought.
It made me wonder who this Destiny was who called him so much. “Any other calls you need to make before we get started again?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“You sure? No one important waiting for a call or anything?”
“No, just my mom. I’m ready for you.”
“Okay, want to turn around? We’re all done with your front.”
Mr. Kim turned and faced the hanging roll of white plastic sheeting. I clicked on the compressor and picked up the spray gun and started moving slowly up his legs from his Achilles tendons. When I reached the top of his thighs, I applied a couple of extra sprays under his bottom to give his cheeks a more rounded appearance, and then I asked him to bend over and spread himself apart. I turned the nozzle on the gun from a horizontal to a vertical position and aimed it into his crack, spraying a gradually tapering mist that dropped off to nothing at his taint.
“This is going to look completely natural. Stay just like that for a sec so it has a chance to dry.” I topped up the reservoir on the compressor from the gallon jug of tanning solution.
“You’re doing a fantastic job,” he said. “So thorough!”
“It’s definitely giving you a more toned appearance,” I told him. “But remember that just because you look tan, it doesn’t mean you are tan. Underneath the nice golden color your skin will still be just as ghostly pale and just as susceptible to UV rays, so you’ll still need to incorporate sunscreen into your daily skin care routine while you’re in Austin.”
“Okay, Mom,” he said laughing. “Actually, my mom doesn’t say things like that. But this is going to be so good. I can just feel it.”
Midway up his back the gun stopped spraying. I pressed and repressed the trigger a few times. Nothing. I grabbed some Handi Wipes and cleaned the nozzle and tried again. I tried kicking the compressor. That did it. When I pressed the trigger again the buildup of pressure sent the liquid out in a forceful stream, shooting Mr. Kim in the back, like a paint gun fired at close range.
He let out an anguished noise of pain and surprise.
“Oh, fuck!” I yelled. “I’m so sorry! That was not supposed to happen.”
“What the hell?” Mr. Kim turned around slowly with a confused, hurt look on his face, rivulets of tanning solution dripping from his bottom and streaming from his hair down over his face and shoulders. He was drenched, as if someone had thrown a pot of coffee at him. “Did you make a mistake?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, blinking back tears. “This has never happened before. All that careful toning and shaping is ruined.”
Mr. Kim looked crushed. His shoulders caved forward and he let out the gut he’d been holding in.
I tried to think what to do. I couldn’t let him leave disappointed with his tanning experience. “I’m so sorry,” I said again, lamely. “Of course, today is no charge and I can give you a certificate for three free spray tans.” I knew my boss would subtract this from my pay.
I yanked open the paper towel holder on the wall and pulled out the whole stack of paper towels and started in on his hair first, so it would stop dripping into his eyes. Mr. Kim rubbed the back of his neck, then looked at the tanning spray that came off on his fingers. He was shivering.
“Did you know that we can’t actually feel wetness, only infer it from the temperature and pressure sensations that go along with it?” he said. There he was, drenched and exposed, and still trying to make me feel better with facts.
I soaked up the worst of the liquid running down his chest and back. “I’ll grab you a real towel in a minute, let’s just get some of this off you before it dries, so you won’t be so blotchy.”
“I’m going to be all blotchy for the reunion now?” he asked.
I suggested using some apricot scrub when he got home and gave him a handful of paper towels so he could wipe down his lower half. Then I crawled around on the floor, spreading out more towels where the liquid was running off the plastic.
I was eye level with Mr. Kim’s junk and I took a quick look. Being cold hadn’t subtracted much from what he had going on. I bet the ex-girlfriend in Austin hasn’t forgotten his positive attributes, I thought.
And then I saw the seam, the puckering line running down his scrotum from his first weeks of life in utero as a female zygote, before his labia had fused together. I stopped mopping and stared at this evidence of his transformation, faint but legible, like my acne scars. We’re free to start as one thing and become another, but traces of our earlier selves remain.
“What are you doing to me?” said Mr. Kim, in a low voice. He was stiffening under my gaze. My old teacher was getting a boner. It seemed almost laughable given the situation. And yet, I thought. And yet. There was the urge to see that puckering line up close, to cup that fragile, scarred thing in my hand. And so I scooted out of my smock and T-shirt, already on my knees on the wet plastic, and performed the only other service I could think of that might help.
None of it was what I’d imagined in high school. There wasn’t that feeling I’d craved back then, and still do, of there being nothing else in the world besides me and that one other person. I still noticed the hum from the ugly fluorescent lights overhead, I was aware of how much time was passing. But there was the pleasure of seeing a grown man reduced to a helpless animal by his need for me. Many women waste years of their lives on this pleasure because real connection is so hard to find. I certainly have.
He didn’t make a sound for a while, like he was holding his breath, and then I heard him whisper, “Thank you,” and then “Jesus Christ,” louder, rocking on his heels, and he took my ears and held them gently, as though warming them.
I wondered who I could tell about this, later. If I encountered something beautiful and didn’t tell anyone about it, I felt I had been given a gift and somehow squandered it. Like pain, the experience of beauty begs for expression.
“It was silly,” is how I would probably describe it to a friend. But in truth it was tremendously exciting, the way I could make this large and important, to me anyway, man, develop protuberances and squirting liquid, like a strange sea creature.
*
“I don’t know your name,” he said afterwards, and I told him. I watched his face for a spark of recognition, but I guess Morgan is a fairly common name.
“Thank you, Morgan. Now I’ve really got to get cleaned up enough to get home to Queens,” he said, through chattering teeth. I thought of telling him who I was, but he didn’t need to know how it had started for it to end perfectly.
I tried to stand but my knees had gone numb kneeling on the hard floor. I cleaned myself off and held up what was left of the paper towels, fanning them out in a delicate half circle towards him.
Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash