Promises, Promises

Well, I did it again — made a promise about a future blog topic that I am now loath to fulfill. The tattoo was a brief thrill that has now assumed its rightful place on the Interest Meter, somewhere above bitching about the weather but below this year’s amazing fall color and reading my horses’ body language. (Noble steeds? I have a pair of four-legged clowns.) Now, it’s just a thing; I notice it from time to time but mostly it’s like a fabulous new nail color. Much as I might like it, I don’t pause to admire it while I’m picking the horses’ hooves. Life goes on in Brumley Gap.

But I said what I meant, and I meant what I said, I guess. I feel an obligation to finish what I started. I’ll try to say something for a broader audience, or at least throw in something completely unexpected, for gratuitous-sex-and-violence value.

Anyway …

Tips for Would-Be Tattooees

1) Wait a few decades.

I can date the first time I told a friend I was seriously considering a tattoo to sometime between 1993 and 1996, the years I worked with her. You always hear that tattoos are not just for sailors anymore, but just that few years ago, they were. It was a shocking thing for a college director of public relations to admit. My friend’s eyes grew wide, but when I told her I was thinking of something to memorialize the son that I had lost, she said, “Oh don’t worry about it. No matter what anyone thinks about the tattoo, they’ll forget it instantly when you tell them that.”

For well over a decade, I never got a tattoo, until about the exact moment a new idea replaced that old one. In my 30s I was wise enough to know that I didn’t want it to be my son’s name — I didn’t want to explain who “Andrew” was to every stranger who innocently asked. In my late 40s, I realized that I didn’t want a symbol of him either. In my case, the tattoo was all about me. I just wanted it. It was far, far too frivolous and self-centered an endeavor for a memorial. I would have felt silly and a little guilty every time that I saw it. On some level, I think I always knew that.

One last aside on this tip:  After reading the barest minimum on the long-term effects of tattoo inks, my personal opinion is that a woman, especially, should consider whether she should be beyond child-bearing age. I elected not to get vegetable inks no matter what, and not to think about the metal-based alternatives. That is a luxury of being my age — the ink in my skin that I will carry around with me for the rest of my life can only affect me.

2) Respect that your body will be taking a big immune-response “hit.”

In a previous blog on this subject, I posted an awful photograph of myself the evening after I got the tattoo, still looking exhausted and puffy-eyed after a hard two-hour nap. Doug said I looked stoned. I wasn’t real sure why I put it up, except for a vague sense that I wanted people (my daughters) to know, should they decide to get a tattoo: they should be very healthy and take excellent care of themselves, especially in the days before. It didn’t hurt until briefly, at the end of about two hours of needles, but I knew by the way that I crashed afterward that I was actively in the process of doing some serious healing. The artist that I had chosen said he could tell by looking at my skin and the way that it was responding that I eat very, very well (I do), and he asked me if I worked out. (I don’t, except for working horses and being outside a lot.) He himself is top-notch; among the things that impressed me when I chose him was that he takes photographs immediately after doing a job, so people can see that a brand new tattoo doesn’t have to look like bad road rash. I followed the after-care instructions, continued to rest and eat really well, and the thing was perfectly healed up in 5 to 7 days. Never itched, never hurt. Never got a wicked-bad antiobiotic-resistant staph infection.

And that will be enough of that. I’ve got horses to ride. But before I go …

Two old ladies are talking to each other. One whispers secretively, “I went to see my doctor because every time I sneeze, I have an orgasm!”

“Oh you poor dear!” says the other. “What are you taking for it?”

“Why, ragweed.”

Put me down, put me down!

From a young age, I’ve been completely magnetized by others’ cultural experience, human ways of being that are very different from my own. Up to a certain point, my mother would have grabbed me up by the collar to save me from my curious self, me wriggling and stroking the air like a rabbit being held by its neck fur.

With a little teenage autonomy and a car, I started exploring in earnest. I look back on a night I sat amongst the members of a major South El Paso street gang — in a dark, abandoned adobe house, guns, knives, bottles and bongs getting passed around with equal enthusiasm — and wonder, what the hell was I thinking? Like a white-blond, goody-two-shoes, 17-year-old East Side girl in an Izod shirt and saddle oxfords is going to pass for a fly on the wall? “Don’t mind me, ese, I’ll just squat here in this especially dark corner and be silent as a gargoyle. Proceed, proceed, pass those automatic weapons right along.” Girls like I was wind up the subjects of various CSI television series — and not in the good way. My mother tended never to believe the "anthropologist in training" explanation if I got myself caught, true as it was — nor would the court system, I suspect, if I'd found myself in it. Police busts, like revolutions and mob mentalities, usually sweep everyone up, even if one person in the group doesn't "look" like she belongs.

Luckily, I found safer ways to get inside strangers’ homes and study their lives at will, take notes even — first as a reporter for a newspaper, and later, in the actual, bona fide study of anthropology. (Looking at real estate works, too:  just don’t correct your agent’s misconceptions about the house you really want, and he or she will have to unlock lots and lots of doors for you.)

And of course, there’s travel. I've not gotten spectacular amounts of it, mind you; my life's been mostly otherwise engaged up until now. But one of my very fondest memories from my marriage is of sitting with Doug on a street curb in Juarez, Mexico, under a blazing hot summer sun, bathed in the language, color, stench and beauty of a big, robust city in an entirely different world. We were drinking fruity sodas from glass bottles, way too sweet for American tastes; Doug was asking for translations of the various billboards around us, with their oh-so-familiar American logos but colloquial slogans that made us laugh out loud. Behind us, the hand-blown-glass factory workers plied their dangerous trade in lava on a 114-degree day. People unlike us in every way swept by like water, diesel fumes and honking horns filled the air, whatever rules of the road existed failed to make any sense to us. I felt a familiar electrical sparking in my brain. I looked over at him, and he smiled, a discovery burgeoning and catching fire within him. I knew he got it — why I call travel to another country “the intellectual orgasm” — and I was overcome with the confirmation of that moment, that ours would be a long and happy pairing.

I write this as I consider some of the shocked responses I’ve gotten on my new tattoo. It seems strange to me. My own 80-something parents won’t be shocked. Not thrilled, but not shocked. Doing something like this is just like me. Ordering lunch with purple hair, in a Pennsylvania city where every last house is painted the exact same shade of white, makes me belly-laugh, and feel alive. Same with hiking to the furthest Anasazi outpost in Chaco Canyon, alone. Trying to blend in in South America, even if I am 5’11 and a female traveling alone. (People threw their arms around me with grief-stricken looks on their faces when they found out my husband was not with me, as though I'd been widowed and cast out onto the streets.)

I got this tattoo, 100 percent, for the experience. For the chance to think through such a scarily permanent change, and execute, even though I was scared. To see what all the fuss is about. To see if I could pull it off, with some degree of grace for a woman of my age. Typically for me, because I am older and smarter, I hope, I did my homework fiendishly. I wasn’t really seeking danger — I was seeking experience.

That I got, in a nice little chunk that didn’t require 20 hours on a plane and thousands of dollars. It was a perfect, crisp fall morning, punching the gas pedal through the Jefferson National Forest, speeding toward something that both frightened and excited me, and that I’ve been thinking about for almost 20 years. And wow — it turned out A-OK. Today, my dubious best friend said it was the most beautiful tattoo she’d ever seen. (Note: we have very similar tastes.) After an initial 12 hours of a little freaked-out buyer’s remorse, I am happy with it, too. Really happy.

But hoo boy, I’ve still got more to say. Like everything else in life, it's been a most interesting filter through which to consider the universe, internal and external. At least, to me, and isn't that the whole point with something as self-centered and personal as a tattoo? 

Next up:  why I feel a person should be in at least her fourth decade before getting a tattoo, maybe toward the end of it, and why I didn’t memorialize my son. And then to some other topic — promise.

It Feels Like The First Time

On this, the first day of the tenth month of the year 2011, in my 47^th year, I got my first tattoo. Or more accurately, my first 2/3 of a tattoo — I’ve got to go back in about a month to get some touchup on the part done up to now, and have the remaining 1/3 inked in.

This will almost certainly be my last tattoo, too, though I couldn’t say for sure on that. This morning, after weeks of fiddling with the design and fretting over composition, I let go of all those worries on the hour-and-a-half drive, and focused instead for the first time on how much it would hurt. It seemed about time to think about that. I’d seen one photo online that was firmly in my mind, of a big burly guy screaming out as the needle hit his back. Another local tat shop (that I chose not to go to) distributes bumper stickers to clients that we see on the roads here all the time. Hell yeah it hurts, the stickers say, above the shop’s name. I suppose “bad ass” is supposed to be part of a tattoo wearer’s bragging rights.

Much to my surprise, it didn’t hurt at all. Almost not at all. I sat in the chair with my chosen artist working behind me, screwed up my mouth and wondered what I was missing? I kept asking how far along we were in the process, since for the first two hours I was convinced he must still be sketching. Not really into it yet, or something. I was always pleased to hear we were pretty far along. In the last short while, it did smart a little, as layering a third color in asked a bit much of nerves that were raw from the previous two. Even then, I only jumped a hair, once.

Am I happy with it?

I am neither happy nor unhappy. I’ll be asking for specific corrections when I return in a month, super-minimal things like, “increase the size of this shading by 1/8 of an inch, and round this out more by a degree or two.” Yes, it’s nutty — I chose this artist for his own attention to detail. I should have known I’d want to grab up the needles and start doing my own drawing. Luckily, the real expert between the two of us was working on my back, so that even I realized I could not take over, and so that he did not need to call in the law. “Yes, I need an officer here right away please — I’ve got a crazy lady on my hands who thinks she can do her own tattoo.”

The fact remains, we still need to finish this one. I am being harsh, because damn it, the fact that I would be was just oh-so-predictable.

Stay tuned. I've already got tips for anyone who's even more of a newbie than I am.

I won't show a photograph until it's finished. So here's me instead after the fact, in a tube top with my sweater off the shoulder where my brand-spanking new tattoo is, ponytail on the opposite side to keep my hair off of it. And, looking really wrung out after this day. No pain, but apparently a lot of psychological stress. I guess.

Two to Tango

Not too long ago, I had a hairstylist I loved very much, and he loved me. Man, he gave good hair-washings  --  I gladly paid him every nickel he asked for his pricey cuts and color, plus a big fat tip for the time he spent with me at the sink. This was despite the fact that whatever I said I did not want, was what I got. If I said, "No red in the color, Jack; red is no good with my skin tone," then it was settled. Red it would be, a metallic, candy-apple red, something akin to what you might expect to see on a Corvette. (Jack was crazy-good with shine.) Oh well, I would think to myself, I guess Doug and I won't need to wear blaze orange in the mountains this hunting season.

This tango could not go on without two of us obviously, my hairdresser and me. I was a willing partner in the game of Let's Dress Judy Up. Over the years I've begun to understand a little better why a group of friends long before this began calling me Barbie no matter how much I protested, no matter how much I cussed and spit and told them to knock it off.

Wash my hair? OK, call me whatever you want.

I am thinking of this now as time hurtles me toward the tattoo appointment I've had for two weeks. I have thought about it plenty over the years, and then really really thought about it over the last 14 days. I have worked and reworked the design. I have done my utmost to find the right professional and artist. I also know very well what it's like to stand in front of the mirror and wonder if I even speak English  --  I who always thought of herself as pretty good in the language department.

Why do we find most alluring precisely what terrifies us? Would I go to all this trouble and expense, drive the hour and a half, plus endure the pain, if it weren't permanent?

No, I would not.

* By the way, the appointment is still something like 42 hours away, and I still reserve the right to back out.