Joe Vampire

POST 17



Beyond the Pale



Anyone out there have a remedy to bring a more human tone back to skin that’s turned the color of E.T.? Hoping for more than make-up tips here, since that’s really not my thing. Just maybe some nature-based solution, like something I can eat or bathe in that will bring me closer to my former color. I thought my paleness would sort of level off by now, but somehow it’s gotten worse. Like my internal vampire parts recognized their kindred in my Eastern European DNA and are keeping me at a soft, dish-watery gray. My dietary limitations haven’t helped matters, I’m sure. But I’m a big believer in the overlooked miracles of the natural world, and I’m convinced there’s a way to trick my body into thinking it’s still healthy and alive even though it isn’t quite. I’d be happy if it could at least appear that way. And before anyone suggests tanning, let me explain why that won’t be an acceptable answer: it’s too obvious. And, for someone with severe light aversion, kind of dangerous.

And also: I’ve already tried it.

Epic fail, as the phrase goes.

My sister’s birthday is sneaking up, and my parents are having us all to their place for dinner. I’m so not ready to share the vampire aspects of my life with them. They’re a snarled knot of neo-Freudian dysfunction that I don’t have fingers limber enough to undo. It took my mother fifteen years to admit that I’m sexually active… and have been for the last fifteen years. Something like This would just mess her shit up. Hube thought maybe the change would be less noticeable – and therefore less enticing fodder for dinner conversation – if I reduced my white-itude by hitting a tanning salon. “Dude, I molt in sunlight. I’d rather be pale.”

“But it’s artificial sunlight in those beds,” he reasoned. “Maybe it won’t have the same effect.”

He was trying to be helpful. I hated to crush his soul. Plus, I had no better ideas. “Think so?”

“If it dims your permanent bloodless glow, it’s worth a try.” Okay. That wasn’t so helpful.

But I was already in.

I waited until I had worked up enough nerve – and until a coupon appeared in my mailbox – and showed up without an appointment at the nearest Tantastic. The girl behind the counter was about a shade past Oompa Loompa, and seemed a little put out for someone who should have as much vitamin D stimulation as she did. I wasn’t sure if she was grossed out by my ghoulish non-color or just ticked because I hadn’t scheduled a bed. Then she looked at what was in my hand, and it all came clear.

It was the coupon.

You can always tell when clerks don’t appreciate your frugality; they pause a little as they take your Certificate of Cheapskating, as if they don’t know where it’s been, or like it has boogers on it. “Says fifty percent off,” I told her, trying to be extra-friendly to compensate for my sickly appearance. I heard her think, You think I give a shit, Casper? But her mouth said, “Yeah… can’t beat that.” Her eyes never bothered to look in my direction.

That sort of set the climate for the rest of our interaction.

She walked me back to the booth and showed me the tanning bed. I stared at its futuristic sleekness, all fluorescence and fiberglass, never realizing until that moment how much those things resemble coffins. And she wanted me to lay down in it? Thanks, but no. I was nowhere near ready to make such a symbolic commitment to my vampireness. So I did what anyone facing a similarly difficult situation would do.

I faked a psychological condition.

“I’m kind of claustrophobic,” I told her, and I asked if there was any chance that there was a more open version of these things, maybe like a couch or a chair-shaped deal. “Another shape of tanning bed? You’re kidding, right?” I just smiled awkwardly. “What an idiot.” I didn’t need to read her mind for that one. She just said it right out loud. “Maybe you’re a candidate for airbrushing instead.”

Uh… yeah. That’s what I was thinking.

She walked me to the bonus humiliation section of the shop where, instead of laying on tubes that emanate cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation, you stand balls-out naked in a tiny closet while hydraulic jets spray you with toxic flesh-colored paint. Apparently, my coupon covered either one. I know I don’t keep up with trendy things, and I’m sure I’ve seen people covered in aerosol skin color before and just didn’t realize what I was looking at. But coming face to face with the machine that makes the magic happen was almost as disturbing as seeing the tanning casket. When a girl stepped out of the chamber dripping beads of brown sweat down her fluffy robe, I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off digging the Maaco coupon out of my mailer instead; if I was going to be spray-painted, I might as well be weatherproof, too. But I’d gone this far, and I’d already given Carrot Face my coupon.

It was too late to exercise my zero other options.

So I got color-tested by someone who, judging by her own personal preferences, maybe didn’t have the greatest talent for that sort of thing. The pumpkin-colored clerk worked intently, holding paint chips against my arm to gauge the right shade. She ended up choosing a color called Dappled Pecan. “I used to date a stripper by that name,” I joked. It did nothing to lighten the mood. She shoved me into the chamber where I dropped trou and waited, pale and naked and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just let my family learn to love my ultra-whiteness. There was some hissing and chugging as the machine calibrated, or whatever the terminology is.

Then nothing.

So I called out, “Is it working?”

A muffled noise came from the other side of the door, sounding something like “Keys or mouse hut” spoken with a whole lot of attitude.

Maybe she hadn’t heard me. “I said, is it working?” The same muffled noise came back, in the same shitty tone. “Listen,” I hollered after a few more seconds, all out of patience, "is this thing going to work or not?”

“Keep your mouth shut, dumbshit!” she hollered back… just as the machine kicked on and dropped a load of dye in my gaping maw. I was busy hoping it wouldn’t make me sick (because apparently I don’t consider being a vampire to be sickness enough) when another jet took my eyes. So I spun and spit and wiped, feeling paint invade places that Sherwin Williams wasn’t meant to go. I had my hands over the high jets, and one foot covering the lower jets while the other tried to keep planted on the floor as it covered with slippery goo. Then it came out from under me, and I landed on my super-white ass… which was now the tannest part of me besides my palms, my eyes and the soles of my feet.

It was so not worth the coupon.

When Hube saw me at practice that night, all zebra-striped in cadaver gray and mottled beige, he sort of knew not to ask what happened. Lazer, on the other hand, laughed his ass off. I expected as much. I can just imagine my family will react in varying degrees of the same. And now I’m busily making up excuses to avoid telling them the truth while I shower repeatedly, waiting for the patches of Dappled Pecan to mellow into a slightly less humiliating tone of Splotchy Stupid White Guy. I can’t help but wonder if other vampires out there are putting themselves through the same ridiculous paces just to keep the lid on their weirdness.

And I’m still open to suggestions, by the way.