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So I go to the booth (I am convinced they use the term booth because “stand-up cave of horrors” doesn’t have the same ring to it) and the girl at the salon gives me instructions a child could grasp, and leaves me in there to it. Well, you have to smear this barrier cream on your hands and feet, ostensibly so they look like you unevenly smeared Chee-to dust on them instead of looking like you just dug up a grave by hand. But you have to put on one of those shower caps lunch ladies wear first. I always forget this, then have to wipe off the caked-on barrier cream, then try to put the shower cap on, but I NEVER get all the cream off so I get it in my hair, a la “There’s Something About Mary.” I struggle horribly EVERY time I have to get the shower cap on, because I am blonde (no surprise there) and I like big hair, and the hair won’t fit in the stupid cap so I jump up and down and slam it on the ground and seethe and swear and it slips off and shoots across the room and then I retrieve it and finally, finally get it on but have to breathe through the stitch in my side and the flop sweat. Oh…oh…did I mention I’m naked during this bit of fun? It’s so humiliating. Like prom night all over again. So I finally get the stupid cap on, and smear the barrier cream back on my hands and feet.

Now, it is usually about this time it occurs to me I might have to pee.  PSA: DO NOT wait and think you can hold it!  The tanning spray comes out “room temperature” i.e. “freezing freaking cold” and you WILL pee on yourself.  I’m pretty sure the ingredients for Napalm are urine and spray tan, so DON”T chance it!  I know, I know, Napalm is Tide and gasoline, but they are similar in composition, I’m convinced.  Plus, if you pee on yourself, the spray tan will RUN DOWN YOUR LEG carving a pale trail and EVERYONE will know!!  Once I am sure I won’t do the whizz of shame, I enter into…the Torture Chamber of Brown.

There is this little blinking light that I push when I get in there that starts “The Process”…bom, bom, bom! To say I am feeling a bit trepidatious would be a gross understatement. It terrifies me. Mainly because there are numbers on the floor, but over the loud noise of it spraying liquid hate onto my nubile flesh, and my generalized sense of claustrophobia, it is hard for me to hear when it tells me to move to the next position. See, I’m a larger gal, so I have to stand differently than a thinner person would because I need it to spray all my crannies (and everyone knows tanned crannies look waaayyy better than pale crannies) so it takes me a bit longer to get into my poses. It sprays four times, so I have to turn four times: one front (chest out so no under boob rings, not that I have boobs, but oh well), one left turn (one arm up, one back with legs in running position like an Egyptian), one right turn (same as left turn but with other arm up), and one back (back hunched slightly), and I’m done, all in about 45 seconds, easy peasy, right? Nope. Because it is like 50 First Dates in there! No matter how many times I do it, in my nervous hurry, I inevitably forget which hand I had up on the turns, so I get one side of one arm sprayed twice and one not at all! And every time it first starts to spray, I tell myself not to get startled and inhale sharply, but I do anyway. (Parenthetical aside: I just know on my autopsy they are going to look at my lungs and ask if I was a 30 pack per day smoker, but then my toxicology report will come back as “spray tan lung.” But I digress.)  Finally, when it gets to my back, I have to hunch way over like a silver back gorilla (thanks to the crannies back there) and I fear it will inadvertently give me an enema.  Oh, back fat, torment be thy name!

When it is completely over it beeps, and I get out, but as I stand there naked for a bit air drying, it occurs to me that this is quite possibly the worst humiliation I have ever PAID FOR. But there is a sense of accomplishment and, dare I say it, RELIEF! So, I snap the shower cap off, dress only in a loose fitting tunic that just covers my rear, and sprint to my car barefoot, because I don’t want to disturb the Chee-to dust. I get home, and, since I get the bronzer, I am already Oompa Loomping it into the house. I’m thinking I look great, and all the sacrifice and terror and nook and cranny spraying is worth it when my husband takes one look at me and says, “Why are you orange, and what’s that in your hair?!”