July 14, 1983. When I woke up, I was laying crossways at the foot-end of a double bed in the beach cabin, on my back, uncovered. I had on a pair of Lamar U. gym shorts, once bright red but now faded almost pink – magenta, maybe – with the white piping along the sides and bottoms of the legs fraying and coming loose. The skin along my chest and belly and on the tops of my arms and legs had turned medium to dark brown. I had been out in the sun a lot that summer. After burning off a few layers of skin early on in the spring, I no longer got sunburned. Rather, each subsequent exposure just turned me darker. And, melanoma be damned, I didn’t use sun block; at times I slathered on a coconut-oil based Coppertone product called Savage Tan, something like that, which not only did not block UV rays, but I am fairly certain was formulated to actively attract them.Read More
