Naturally Tan Read online

  After a couple of months, we talked everything over and decided we wanted to be exclusive. And so, after a year or so of dating, we got an apartment together in Manchester, after my family had already moved out there. None of my family members knew about any of it. They assumed I had a housemate.

  Even though we lived together, our relationship was very on again, off again. We had a lot of differences, and we argued often—I didn’t like how much he drank, and that wasn’t going to cut it for someone who was in the gay community. When he drank, he would get a little too sloppy, and I just wasn’t into being embarrassed or having to make sure he didn’t do anything silly that either of us would regret the next day. In the UK, to be a part of the gay community, everyone would go out until 3:00 a.m. on Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, and then do it all over again the next weekend. He would drink; we would fight, break up, and then make up, again and again.

  He clearly wasn’t the partner for me, but he was a great starter boyfriend, and he taught me a lot. I went to my first nightclub with him and had my first drink with him. And through this, I discovered that it was not the life for me. I would join Dave and our friends at the bar for light drinks and chat. Then we’d move on to a club when the bars started to wind down. Then we’d drink and dance until super late into the night. I have nothing against anyone who’s into the bars-and-clubs scene; many of my friends frequent them regularly. It’s just not my happy place.

  After a few years of breaking up and making up, I got the feeling that he was about to break up with me for good. At this point in our relationship, we fought more than ever, and the fights often became really nasty. I would swear at him, and he would swear at me. We were hurtful with each other.

  Many times we fought and then slept in the same bed, as far away from each other as physically possible. This was one of the most horrible times of my life. That feeling—where the person you’re in a relationship with wants to keep their distance from you, and vice versa—was heartbreaking. It became such a regular occurrence that it was clear to me our time together was drawing to an end. But I knew I would never be the one to leave. He was my first boyfriend, and even though it was clear we were terrible for each other, I was too scared to risk no one ever wanting me again, so I was willing to tough it out.

  Thankfully, that was the first and last time I allowed myself to feel that way with a partner—to feel like if it all ended that I would never be loved again. I’m so relieved that it’s something I only had to experience once. That shit was crippling.

  I had changed so much over the four years we’d been dating. Because I was so unhappy, things like self-care fell by the wayside. I had no desire to get dressed up nicely for him, to make an effort to be desirable to him. These were things that I could have done to try to get that spark back, but I was letting myself go more and more by the day.

  Finally, the day arrived. I had been gone the night before, and when I returned home, I found all his bags were packed. I knew full well we had been fighting all the time. I was a different person back then because our dynamic was so unhealthy. Still, I remember seeing his bags and thinking, What’s going on?

  “We’re not getting along,” he told me. He sat on the sofa. He was calm. Not angry at all. Not mean. Just honest. “You’re not the same person you were. You’ve let yourself go.” That’s the one real thing I remember, how painful that was to hear. He said I never wanted to go out anymore, that I never wanted to get dressed up.

  “You get so dressed up for everybody else,” he told me. “But I only get the worst version of Tan. The Tan who makes no effort.”

  I sat there on the sofa in my terribly unflattering sweatpants. That hit really hard. I didn’t know what to say. Then he told me he was done. He said he was leaving, that he didn’t want to be in this relationship anymore.

  In shock, I walked him to the door, and we said goodbye. Then I came back inside, slid down the wall, and collapsed onto the floor, where I cried for what felt like hours and hours. I thought that only happened on TV.

  We had broken up for real, and I went crazy. I’d never had my heart broken before, and I didn’t know how it felt to be broken up with. I couldn’t believe it had happened. It felt like it would never get better.

  At first, I thought, I haven’t let myself go! But over time, I realized he was absolutely right. I freaking hated when he was right! The only time I made an effort was for other people. The only version of me he saw was the one that made no effort, disheveled Tan at home in his baggy sweatpants and unflattering old T-shirts. That was such an eye-opener for me.

  I never made that mistake again.

  A lot of us fall into that trap, where you make an effort for everyday people who are insignificant to you. We should make that same amount of effort for our partners, who are the most important people in our lives. They shouldn’t be the ones who get the laziest version of us. Yes, we want to be comfortable enough to not have to put on airs and graces for them, but that doesn’t mean making no effort to be desirable for them.

  On Queer Eye, people say they’ve let themselves go and will share how it’s impacted their marriages. But when they start to present themselves differently, that one thing changes so much about their lives and how they view themselves. Do I think you have to be somebody you’re not? No. Should you be comfortable around your significant other? Yes, of course. But I think you should make an effort for them, because it’s about respect—the respect you have for yourself and the respect you have for your partner.

  Do I sometimes sit around the house in my sweats? Yes, sometimes I do. But they are the nicest sweatpants I can find, which complement my physique and are clean. And I’m showered and still presentable. I have nothing against sweatpants if they look good. The problem is more about when you’ve put no effort in whatsoever. Both you and your partner deserve more than that.

  One day, I’ll achieve my dream of finally having kids. And then I’ll wear sweatpants all the time and write a book about how much I regret having kids, because two-year-olds are a frickin’ nightmare and I cannot wait to ship them to boarding school. Then when people ask me, “Tan, why are you in sweatpants?” I can very calmly reply, “Bitch, you try having four children.”

  In the meantime, though, I will make an effort.

  I’m glad Dave was the first person I dated, because he’s a really nice person, a good guy who taught me so much. He wasn’t the right guy for me, but I still love and care for him very much. We’ve remained friends over the years. Every few months, we’ll message via social media, and we get together every couple of years when I’m back in the UK. And thanks to him, I’ve learned to never let my partner see me looking unkempt in my ratty ol’ sweats.

  BROGUES

  When I was seventeen years old, I had my part-time job at the call center, where I sold phone and internet lines over the telephone. It was not a job I’d dreamed of having, but it paid well, and it was something I knew I could do. All I had to do was talk to people who called in and sell them on something. I’m not really sure how I excelled at it, because I was just a kid, but I was very convincing, and I got a nice commission at the end of every month. Even though I was still living at home at the time, I didn’t actually save any money, because I liked to spend it unwisely. To be more exact, I’d spend every penny I made on clothes and shoes.

  That same year, I found this pair of brogues (what Americans call wing tips) that changed my life. I had seen them at a store, but as was often the case back then, I was out of money. I’d spent it all on other crap I didn’t need within the first week of receiving my paycheck. As soon as I had the money again, I ran straight to purchase the brogues, but they were no longer available. I was mortified. I was very dramatic about missing out on sartorial opportunities.

  Months later, I was in an outlet store where I discovered they had just one pair of the brogues. As luck would have it, they fit me perfectly. Even more incredibly, instead of costing £150 (which back then was close to $
300) they were available for only £20. I was like, “Let’s pack them up now.”

  They were a camel/taupe-y colour that looked beautiful with my skin tone. The cut was slightly narrow, which I loved, because it made my feet petite and slender. They had a bit of a lift—just an inch or so—and they made me feel tall. They were technically a special occasion shoe, but they looked great with absolutely everything. I wore them all the time.

  At this same time in my life, I started to become an unruly boy. I loved to do things that I knew were wrong. All my South Asian friends and I learned to lie to our parents early on, which was a necessary skill in such a strict community. Up until this point, I hadn’t had much of a social life. I had never asked to go outside the house after school hours. I didn’t go out on the weekends. I didn’t even do things with friends. (This was all pre-Dave.) So when I started to sneak around, they didn’t think anything of it. “If he says he’s studying, he must be studying!”

  In high school, I used to go to the mall on Wednesdays, when I was supposed to be in phys ed. I hated phys ed. I had this weird party trick, in which I would kind of pop my arm out of its socket, which I demonstrated for my phys ed teachers so they’d think I was injured, and then I would go shopping. In England, cutting class was called twagging school, and if anyone caught me twagging, I would be in so much trouble. So I went to the next town over, to the Meadow Hall Mall, because 1) they had an H&M, and 2) nobody would catch me.

  One day, I came up with a stupid idea to go to New York. I had always wanted to go, and somehow, I saw it as completely feasible to make this trip as a seventeen-year-old. Surprisingly, my friends were just as eager to be dumbasses and had zero reservations about going along with my plan.

  I told my mum I was going to stay at a friend’s house across town and that I would be gone for five days. She thought nothing of it, because I was such a “responsible kid,” so it wouldn’t have dawned on her to check with my friend’s parents to make sure that I was actually going over there to stay.

  Instead, I booked a flight to New York City with three of my friends. We booked the flights and hotel through a travel agent we found in town. Mind you, we had never even been to London at that point, but we decided it was perfectly appropriate to go on vacation to a foreign land. It was baptism by fire.

  I already knew how to use the train, from my days skipping phys ed on Wednesday afternoons to go to the mall. The train station was only a five-minute walk from my home, and from there, the airport was easy to get to. My friends and I had flown to South Asia enough times to know how the airport worked, so even though we had never travelled on our own, it wasn’t a complicated process. Once we were on the American side, we hopped into a taxi and were in the city before we knew it.

  Since I had gotten so good at hiding what I was up to, my mum and my siblings, bless them, decided to trust me. They were all like, “Oh, he’s Tan. He’s the reliable one.” They never in a million years expected I had gone someplace else—and that the place was on the other side of the Atlantic.

  I knew you had to be twenty-one to get into an American nightclub, but wearing my brogues, I managed to blag my way into a nightclub with my friends Nasrin, Yasmin, and Bina. All South Asian. All my age. All super cute. And all as willing to lie their way into a club for some much-needed dance release. (Sometimes, with South Asian kids, it’s hard to tell how old they are because they can grow facial hair really young. I could grow a full beard by the time I was seventeen!) I even got into Jay-Z’s club, 40/40, and I felt really special. I thought I was so mature. It was the first club I’d ever been to, and I thought it was incredible. The music was exactly what I loved at the time—a mix of hip-hop and R&B. I danced until the wee hours of the morning and felt like a freakin’ baller.

  For five days, when we weren’t getting into clubs, all we did was shop, shop, shop. At the time, I wanted to be Missy Elliott with my Timberland boots and hoodies, and in America, Timberlands were half the price compared to UK prices. I bought seven or eight pairs! Every colour I could find. I even kept them in their boxes so they would stay pristine. Between Von Dutch hats and Timberland boots, I was set.

  It was, sartorially, a dark time for me. (There is no photographic evidence of this, thank God.) None of us were really photo takers, so we didn’t think to buy a camera for the trip. However, there is one hoodie from that trip that I still wear to this day. That was seventeen years ago! So I guess it wasn’t all wrong.

  I called my mum every couple of days using these ten-dollar phone cards that gave you an hour’s worth of call time. I’d seen my mum use them to call people back in Pakistan, so I knew how to place international calls. My first trip went off without a hitch, and so I started to make it a more regular thing, going to New York a couple of times a year.

  On that first trip to New York, I made it back safely. However, I am sad to report that my brogues did not. When I unpacked, they weren’t in my suitcase. How could I have lost them? I called the hotel and accused them of lying. How was it possible no one had found them? They stole them! They saw the beauty of those shoes, as anyone would. “Just send them back to me!” I pleaded. But they swore they were nowhere to be found. They never turned up.

  To this day, I’m still sad about it. Who found you? I’ll wonder. What a treat for that person. If I still had them, I would wear those shoes to this day. That’s how perfect they were.

  I never told my mum about my travels, because it wasn’t a massive issue. I still haven’t, though I guess I just did. (Oops, sorry, Mama.) My friends never told their parents about their secret vacations, either. Our parents always told us that we weren’t supposed to spend our money on selfish things like clothes or vacations. Our only vacations were meant to go home, to Pakistan. In that climate, lying to our parents was so much easier and made much more sense. Do I think it’s right to lie? No. Did I feel it was necessary at the time, to keep the peace and toggle the slack line between my English and South Asian upbringing? Heck yeah.

  Now of course, if one of my own children ever did this, somebody would have to die. There is no way on God’s earth I would ever let my children go from here to London at seventeen years of age. I look back on my adventures and think, You moron, nobody knew where you actually were. Anything could have happened to you, and you would have been all alone in a foreign land. But at the time, I thought I had the mentality of a thirty-five-year-old. We all remember that feeling, I’m sure.

  The moral of the story is this: when you love something, always, always buy a second. Hopefully, you will continue to love it for years and years.

  Losing those brogues changed the way I shop. If I find a great-fitting pair of jeans, I’ll get them in another colour. I have a pair of black boots I love so much that I went and got two more pairs, because they’ll never go out of style. If you find a well-made item that is relatively classic and a good foundation piece, always buy multiples.

  I’m still searching for those brogues. It’s been seventeen years, but I continue to Google to try to find something comparable to that pair of shoes. But there was just something about the art of those shoes that cannot be replicated.

  It would be incredible if one day my mum tells me that she’s had them for all these years. I keep waiting for the day when she’s like, “Here’s your fucking shoes, you douchebag. I knew you were in New York the whole time.”

  HAIR

  I think it’s funny I’ve become known for my hair.

  My hair was never a thing. In fact, until recently, my husband was the one whose hair was always a thing. For the last ten years, anywhere we’d go, people were always stopping him to talk about his hair. He has better hair than I have: it’s dirty blond, peppered with grey. He blow-dries it up and out of his face, similar to mine, but his hair has extra height and a slight curl that I can’t pull off, as whenever I embrace my natural curl, I start to look very typically South Asian. You South Asians will understand that all too well. When I sport it that way, people begin to assu
me I’m fresh off the boat. Rob’s hair is kind of like an old Hollywood star’s hair on their best day. However, since I’m the one who taught him how to style it, yeah, I’m going to take some of the credit. Judge me all you want.

  My hair, though, is another story.

  I remember thinking, even when I was as young as six or seven, Gosh, I hate my hair. I got it cut every two to three months, and I wanted so badly to get a cool haircut. But, like typical South Asian parents who wanted to get the most bang from their buck, my parents had the hairdresser cut it as short as possible.

  We went to a salon literally a stone’s throw from my house—it was two doors down. It was everything you’d expect from a neighborhood salon. It was pretty, pricey, and everyone wore black. The girl who cut my hair was my go-to from the first haircut to my last at that salon, before I moved at the age of ten. She would give me the “short back and sides, and an inch off the top,” which left me with what was close to a crew cut. My features were way too large to accommodate that kind of cut, but looking cute was definitely not the objective for my parents.

  I get it—as a parent, you don’t want to take your kid for a haircut every two or three weeks—but every time it grew out, I wanted so badly to just get a trim. Just a little bit of something that would make me look less dorky than the cut I had.

  It was the ’90s, and the other kids, usually the white kids, had a haircut we called curtains, where the hair was kept as a long fringe and parted in the middle. It usually had a shaved or shorter portion on the bottom. It looked like something from 90210 or like a very young Leonardo DiCaprio or David Beckham.