I had always figured that all tanning salons were created equal.

There’s a dingy waiting room, right — with two folding chairs. There’s the crinkly red/brown receptionist: hair dyed platinum blonde, lips thick with Malibu Barbie lipstick. There will be piles of Cosmopolitan and Racing Cars magazines, all dog-eared, none of them more recent than three years ago. And after you pay your eight dollars, you will wander down a narrow, office-carpeted hallway, searching for “Aruba” or “Puerto Rico” or whatever your closet happens to be named. The door will be like cardboard, the signs simultaneously ornate and cheap. The floors will shake each time the receptionist paces to the supply closet. You will remove your clothing like a prisoner of war, and pull the coffin lid tightly over your body, anxiously anticipating the click and whir before sudden, total immersion in beautiful white light.

It is all it takes to get through February, March, maybe even some of April. You could have taken up another hobby years ago instead, but now you need it, this particular thing.

Having recently moved, I needed to find a new salon near me, but finding Sm@rt T@n was like being on a secret service mission. It’s located behind a thick password-protected metal door, at the end of a twisting hallway, at the top of the stairs, all hovering above business offices, a bookstore and a Starbucks in the middle of Somerville. I burst in, certain of myself as a woman simply running errands, then stood there for a moment, unexpectedly out of place.

“Hi . . .” I said, approaching a golden man, who was busily polishing a glass countertop. “I’m, uh, I’m new here?”

“Ah.” He smiled an unwavering, solid brick of white, and leaned forward. “Let me show you,” he said secretively, “how these beds work.”

I was very nearly about to join the Nameless Blog Challenge: I had written out my comment, with my link and solemn oath to post every day. Thankfully I realized it just in time: wait, you’ve done that before. And it did not make for publishable material — which is too bad, because it was all published.

So, I offer another challenge! For myself and anyone who would care to join.

The Fifth Stage of January

A series of self-portraits, themed “my environment”. Using Photo Booth — or some crappy webcam/old-school digital camera equivalent — only. No Photoshopping or altering of images (except to add borders because everyone knows borders are awesome). How decent/interesting could these possibly look? Let’s find out!

Due when it’s done. If anyone else is interested but uncertain about where/how to upload, check out flickr or email me, I hook you up. More coming.

It seems like any time I need to walk somewhere, I pass the same basketball court. I don’t even know what street it’s on: I just look to my right, and there it is again, always empty and pristine. It’s surrounded by a chain link fence and glows with dim, yellow light at night. You get the feeling that if you entered that place, you’d simply disappear.

The summer that I moved to this city, my boyfriend bought a basketball, and on especially sweltering days we’d walk to this basketball court and shoot some hoops. No one else was ever there, which was nice — but entering that court in July was like placing yourself under a magnifying glass. I could feel the sun burning my scalp, turning the part in my hair a bright, itchy red. My boyfriend tried to teach me how to dribble and pass and block or whatever it is you need to do when playing basketball, but eventually I’d just crawl to the curb in the shade and sit. I would watch him. I would wait for the nausea to pass, for the black splotches to recede from my vision, for the world to stop swirling. I have never, ever liked basketball.

I wanted to be the kind of girl who liked playing basketball. I wanted to be strong and lithe, abrupt and shimmering golden in the sunshine: I wanted to prove myself and the world wrong, suddenly emerging as everything I am not. But mostly what I remember, when I pass that basketball court, is the day I sat there on the curb, sadly watching him, and I thought “I do not love you, and you do not love me.”

That’s okay, I convinced myself. Lots of people do this. And we dated for nearly another year, like lots of people do.

Johnny Cash and June Carter got married in a fever, and I flew into Chicago in the middle of a blizzard. It was the mid-morning, and I’d never seen the city covered in snow before: it made it seem friendlier somehow, softer around the edges. I suppose it just felt like home.

Backpacked and bundled, I boarded the empty El to Grand, and the entire ride I remained twisted in my chair, staring out of the window like some kind of alien tourist. “What are you doing,” I would mumble to myself in disbelief as we edged ever nearer. “What are you doing,” I thought as pulled my mother’s woolen hat over my ears at the bus stop. “What are you doing, what are you doing” I’d shout to myself in gleeful terror with each step down the length of Navy Pier. It was completely deserted, hot dog stands shivering in the wind, the ferris wheel creaking, and I couldn’t feel my toes.

I finally arrived at the end of the Pier, standing in front of the building of my new employment. I took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer.

A few days ago, Jurvis, Maria and I met in the Boston Common to admire the official lighting of the city Christmas tree. As we all know, this tree is given to us by Nova Scotia, because one hundred years ago two boats crashed something people died we helped. Hooray!

The actual tree was like a mile away.