Much Ado about Tattoo

by Kaya

Why would anyone get a tattoo? When in your life would you ever be so absurdly confident in what you like that you’d be willing to permanently mark your body? No one commits to a haircut, an outfit or even earrings for their lifetime – why would anyone consider body art differently? How rarely do we make decisions that are both painful and permanent? So it will hurt a lot and I can’t change my mind, ever? Sign me up! And lets be honest, haven’t you seen how terrible some people’s tattoos are?

“Wow. That’s a pretty big and ominous tattoo for the band ‘Skid Row’. Good call.”

So why do I have a large tattoo on my back? (photo below)

I always thought getting a tattoo was a bad idea. When I was a teacher I saw many high school students with truly terrible tattoos. My students always seem to have a friend who had a tattoo set. These friends would do them a ‘favor’ by giving them a tattoo despite the fact that they were under 18, the minimum legal age to get a tattoo. Do you let your friend cut your hair just because they have a pair of scissors and a combs soaking in suspiciously blue liquid?

I worked with 16 year-olds with tattoos of boyfriend and girlfriend names, song names and, perhaps in case they forgot it, their own names. I would think this would be a decision you’d make with some thought to the person performing the minor surgery. Masturbating in front of your web cam doesn’t make you a “porn star”, reading a Dalai Lama book doesn’t make you a Buddhist and owning a tattoo needle doesn’t make you an artist.

One poor student had his buddy tattoo the name “BOB MARLEY” around his arm. While this may have been the best possible choice of any musician name to get inked permanently onto your body, the design left something to be desired. The letters got progressively larger making the ‘Y’ nearly twice as big as the beginning ‘B.’ It read bob mARLEY. Ouch. And it was massive. Not an easy one to cover-up with Celtic pattern or a girlfriend’s name. Unless he dated a woman named BOBi MARLEY, I suppose.

So why do I have a large tattoo on my back?

When I was in college I visited an apparently eager dermatologist. He was an older man with curiously soft hands. I can’t say I’d previously ever noticed the texture of a man’s hands when I shook them, but this creepy older man’s hands were shockingly smooth. Since he spent time touching my skin seeking out imperfections, it was appreciated if a bit odd.

As a kid growing up in Southern California, I spent most of my time running around with my shirt off. Not in a ‘very special Diff’rent Strokes’ kind of way (no one was taking a photo of me in my skivvies), but in a ‘lets-play-in-the-sun-all-day’ kind of way. As a result, the many moles that mark my skin like a nonsensical connect the dot puzzle were unhappy. Some of the moles grew tired of the constant sun and began to be troublesome as I entered college.

Fortunately, the old man with the soft hands was able to seek out the infidels and remove them from my back. In order to make sure we got all of the potentially cancerous moles out, we had to dig deep. He removed several moles from my back, one so deep that I wondered if he was hoping to find a route to China, find oil or see if there was a secret, underground city thriving beneath the skin on my back. This required stitches and left a minor scar.

However, the other excavations were not so lucky. These moles were not cut deep enough to require stitches, he said. So he used what must have been a melon baller to scoop out the treacherous moles, leaving perfect circles below by should blade on both sides of my back.

Having a scar is cool. Having matching scars because you had cancerous moles removed is not. Having girls at school see your scars and ask if you got shot is cool (true story). Having to explain what actually happened is not (I said it was an unfortunate melon balling accident. Never drink and prepare for a picnic, I told them).

So why do I have a large tattoo on my back?

One Christmas a few years back my grandparents gave me a beautiful painting by an Alaskan artist. It was titled “Communication” and featured three birds stylistically intertwined above what appear to be wings. Convinced that my spirit animal is a red-tailed hawk, the painting took on even more significance. My grandparents are a constant inspiration to me. While my grandmother passed away in ’02, my 92 year-old grandfather is the grooviest guy I know. I truly appreciated the gift and couldn’t wait to display it.

About this time I was becoming disillusioned with my school counseling job and thinking about moving on. I was single, 25 and had some money saved up. Why spend this time doing a job that wasn’t particularly interesting and that I didn’t feel I was good at? I decided to join my good friend on a backpacking adventure in South America. The time frame was undecided, but we figured it would be at least 3 months.

Why do this? Why take off? I guess I felt that this was my life and I didn’t want to be a spectator in it. This life was impermanent, as all things are, and I should make the most of it. If this life is impermanent, then so is my skin. By this logic there would be no such thing as a ‘permanent’ marking. A tattoo suddenly became only as permanent as this skin on my shell. It would only last to the end of this lifetime…a flash in the pan of the universe.

With my newly grasped intro-to-Philosophy concept of impermanence and the encouragement from some key friends as well as my brother, I decided to get the “Communication” painting tattooed onto my back. I would be reclaiming my back after the soft-handed dermatologist marked me, I would be paying tribute to my amazing grandparents, I would be committing to the idea of ‘communication’ as the painting shows and I would be reminding myself of the glorious impermanence of my life. And chicks might dig it, too.

So that’s why I have a tattoo on my back.

I went to get my tattoo from an artist that worked on a friend of mine. He had done a great job and was very into the craft of body art. Painkiller in hand, I went in to get worked on. Ignoring all of the cliché images on the walls of dragons, butterflies and skulls we got to work. (Who picks a tattoo off the wall of a tattoo shop? I can’t imagine someone simply wanting ‘a tattoo’ as opposed to wanting a tattoo of something in particular. Do people go to a plastic surgeon knowing they want work done, but not sure what? “Hmm, maybe I’ll get my floating ribs removed…ooh, or collagen injected into my lips! What’s that lady doing? Having the fat of her thighs drained and shot into her face? Sounds good to me!”)

The tattoo artist first drew the image on my back so I could decide if I liked the placement. While it was a tad difficult to judge the position on my back, I was satisfied. I lay down on the table and he began to jab me with the vibrating needle. He had made a couple of marks when he said, “Well…now you know how it feels.” He knew exactly what I was thinking. And, oh my, it hurt more than I thought.

It’s not the pain of the needle so much as it is the stopping and starting. Once he’s going, I could breath into it and relax. It’s that he can only work for a few seconds at a time. This means there is a stopping, re-inking and starting again. Going from zero pain to intense stabbing pain is tough to endure over and over and over again. The most painful portion was when he was working directly on my spinal column. There’s little skin covering the vertebrae and it feels like the needle is literally bouncing off of my bone. Must…fight…urge…to joke about…phrase… ‘bouncing off of my bone.’

After two hours we were done and my body was shaking fairly significantly. I was buzzing and it felt invigorating. I suppose it would be invigorating to stop after two hours of anything intensely painful and glamorous such as waxing my bikini line or stapling my leg repeatedly.

Everyone said that once you get one tattoo you’d want to rush to get another and another. It’s been five years and I still haven’t gone back to get my first one worked on again. I will, it’s just tough to rally to make time to let someone hurt me.

It’s unusual to have something I’ve added to my body that I can’t take off. For example, I couldn’t ‘turn it off’ when I went to the beach with my future father-in-law. And swimming with a shirt on or constantly moving to make sure you’re always facing each other makes an even more bizarre first impression than having a tattoo.

I guess that’s what makes it such a statement and commitment. Just like someone with a boob job can’t turn off the appeal of having large breasts. Having massive, gravity-defying breasts must be fun when going out to a club on a Saturday night. I’m sure it’s a blast having a strobe light hypnotically flashing on your sweat-glistened globes knowing that you’re getting positive attention. But what about when you’ve got a head cold, you’re tired and at the store to pick up some Thera-Flu? Your face and body are saying, “I feel like crap. I want to take some medication, watch ‘Elimidate’ and sleep,” but your breasts are blowing an air horn and yelling, “I’m a hot, chesty vixen! Check me out! My breasts have magical powers!” And, as a rule, I hate it when my breasts speak for me.

In looking back, I don’t regret getting a tattoo. (I do, however, know many who do. Drunken decisions made with fraternity brothers, drama-prone girlfriends or bikers rarely turn into sound tattoo ideas. Unless your evening involves all three – then you’re probably okay.) Waiting until I was twenty-five and spending time thinking a lot about what image I wanted made a big difference. I like the reminder the tattoo gives me – be open in communication, this life is impermanent and even your high school teacher can have body art.

I’m really glad my grandparents didn’t give me a painting of a clown or one of those “Magic Eye” pictures where you relax your eyes and see a 3-D image of a dinosaur or something. That wouldn’t be nearly as cool on my back…or would it? I’d better grab me some Boone’s Strawberry Hill and call up my old frat bros!