like a rhinestone cowboy

I call him the rhinestone cowboy. He wears expensive cowboy boots with his white doctor coat and one too many turquoise rings. He hails from Newport Beach or Palm Springs, I suspect, and has likely settled in Kayenta. He is my vascular surgeon.

I'm sitting in the exam chair with my foot rested on his knee and concentrating very hard on his skin. Please Alana, don't reach out and touch it. Don't reach out and touch it. Don't reach out and touch it! I am hypnotized, mesmerized, stupefied by his older and tanned yet perfectly smooth, childlike skin. He has the rugged Robert Redford look generally suggestive of leather yet I am looking at creamy, buttery suede. Trance-like, I stare, wondering if I could draw patterns across his cheekbone with my finger like I do on my sofa. (You just know the son of a bitch gets microdermabrasion.)

I'm in his office for a follow-up and have just asked him about what seems to be permanent bruising on my calf. "Yes," he says, "it's iron deposited permanently in your skin from the torn veins. You know..." he starts then pauses long as if he were giving me time to realize the obvious, "a good tan would cover up the scars and discoloration."

A tan? I hadn't thought of it. But of course ol' rhinestone would suggest a tan. Skeptically, I glance to his assistant for a second opinion. She nods slowly up and down in agreement, a sympathetic furrow on her brow, as if to gently say, "yes, honey, everybody should have a good tan."

My parents were sun worshipers. Year after year I baked on the beach, burned at our Palm Springs RV park pool, and blistered while camped on the Sea of Cortez, hunting sand dollars. I formed my idea of manhood watching my father rub baby oil on his belly like he was basting a tight-skinned turkey and will forever be unsure of men who use lotion with an SPF higher than 4. (I'm especially skeptical of those who reapply after swimming.)

But my grandmother was a red head. My other grandmother was a full-blooded Swede complete with large chest and blonde hair. So where did my mother and father really come from? I have my theories. One involves my Mormon polygamist ancestors, escaped to the Mexican colonies. My great grandmother, Jen, was 16 when Pancho Villa and his men came through. (general pillaging, raping, etc.) This would account for that sneaky gene sunk deep in the pool.

Where was I?

Fearful of not heeding a doctor's advice, I did the unthinkable. I visited a tanning salon. I continue to visit a tanning salon. I do it for my anything-but-dainty tree trunks one might call legs. I do it for me.

Weekly, I undress and climb into the tanning bed. I lay my large, white, lumpy body down slowly, thoughtfully, grateful this joint doesn't charge per square inch. Like a lamb to the melanoma slaughter, like a sacrificial gift to Ra, like a cold piece of fatty meat about to be nuked, I pull the coffin lid closed. Then I cover my face with a towel. Not because it's my own execution but because my face reddens like mars and scars like the moon. And maybe also because I'm ashamed- ashamed of what my father would think about this unnatural approach. He might tease, "Did the sun burn out?"

I can imagine them all- my leathery father, my red-headed grandma, Swedes and Irishmen alike- maybe even Pancho Villa himself- standing in radiant light behind the pearly gates. (wait- Pancho Villa in heaven?- depends on who you ask) They are looking down on me. I can't tell, though, if they are proud of my initiative and resolve to look good in shorts or ashamed to own me- now officially superficial and vain.