With soggy, stormy weekends like this one, how am I going to work on my tan lines? Worse, very few tan-lined bodies are walking around town, and I heart a smart tan line.
My love of fleshlines might border on a fetish because I think they are highly erotic, but I don’t go out of my way to find tan line forums or surf the internet for tan line photos, unless you count stalking photographs of Spencer Tunick installations. But that’s art. Gorgeous, fleshy art featuring lots of white people, sometimes with tan or even burn (sigh!) lines. I do like reading personal accounts of people who have participated because they often have candid images of real, not airbrushed nudes.
The best time to see fresh tan lines and raw, throbbing burn lines is Sunday afternoon at the gas station, drug store or grocery store, when weekenders come home from the beach or their fishing trips and mull around wanting to show you their tans. If you want to be very sure of a sighting, might I recommend staking out the aloe vera aisle. When you some potential skin candy, you just have to say “Wow, you got some sun!” and 4 times out of 10 she’ll pull down the shoulder of her t-shirt to show you the fresh stripe. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you’ll get a top-of-the-breast champagne cup confirmation, but that is rare. The cup lines are like a hooker’s kiss– usually reserved for lovers only. Rightfully so.
Sometimes in public you will get the hunky treat of a farmer’s tan on a shirtless man, and that’s hot if you are lucky–depending on hair and beer belly variables. Tanned arms and neck against a creamy chest says that you are gazing upon a man of work, of effort, of stamina. Rawr! Bruce Springsteen supposed always wore a t-shirt in the sun so that he would get a proper working class tan, so that says something. Right?
The only tan lines I’m not sold on are sandal stripes on feet. Shouldn’t feet be wholly tan? Seems so to me. Not that it matters this weekend. The office will be full of head-to-toe SPF 199 poster children. I bet there won’t be a halter bikini-top-neck-tie strip in sight. But… I’m headed to the beach next weekend! Just so you know, if we ever go to beach together, a topless beach is just fine with me. We wouldn’t want any nasty tan lines, would we?