Patchwork orange

It’s patchwork time.

Although not everyone’s prone to tanning, for many of us, it’s the time of year where we start looking a little like Frankenstein’s monster. No two body parts are precisely the same shade — even matching sets that ought to have the same sun exposure, like your hands!

Each skin tone splits like a prism, but the rainbow is an endless fractal of one skin color, shining — if not outright burning — in the sun like a glorious rag rug of mismatched charm blending into a very much seamed, but somehow unified, whole.

The most sun-kissed end of the spectrum rests high. Somehow, the face draws the sun like a magnet, once any part on top of your head has been well and truly singed. And if you dare wear sunglasses to protect those pupils, you’re in for a cherry red surprise across your nose and cheeks. If that doesn’t bother you already, don’t pay attention to how uneven the red blotches are from one side to the other. You can turn to meet the sun head-on like a solar-starved plant, instinctively knowing where to point. But it wouldn’t be enough to keep an even tan. It’s an impossibility of this world. Like good-tasting margarine.

Your feet, on the other hand, are one extreme or another — make that one extreme and the other. Sandal-strapped patches bleach whiter than your dead-winter hue. Exposed neighbors wrinkle into worn leather stained cocoa. Even sneaker lovers are not immune. Their ankles reach shades previously unseen by the human eye, contrasting with the ghostly pale skin of the besocked foot.

Everywhere else is a free-for-all, a gradation that would get you fired from a paint sample making factory. Some squares recede neatly into the next half tone lighter up the legs, and others are an unguessable collage, a Pollock of spots and tans and colored lines that don’t match any article of clothing you own — they don’t even match a human wardrobe.

They move around, too. Yesterday’s farmer tan is today’s inexplicably even upper arm layer … descending into madness of shading in the forearm — something that would have Picasso shaking his head. Who ever saw a human wear patches of color like that? Improbable. Poorly executed. 1/10 stars.

You can try to fight it, throwing on a swimsuit (or kicking it European in the backyard, if you dare!). But it’s probably a waste of tanning oil. Whatever even tan-burn you get going will spoil itself in a week. Because you dared to wear a tank top for five minutes at 8 in the morning. On an overcast day. Really, what were you thinking trying that without sunblock?

Unless you live under an umbrella like Nosferatu on a work trip to the Bahamas, any spray tans will be toast soon, too. Too many five-minute darts into the heat will paint swatches over that even orange glow.

Resistance is futile. The patchwork is a part of your corporeal tapestry, until the fall clouds finally protect you with their perpetual indifference and preference for shorter days.

Until autumn colors abound, you’ll wear every brown and red on your skin instead.

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Elena Johnson can be reached at [email protected].