What I Did With My Sumer Vacation, or, Why des's Back Hurts And Smells Like Ointment

I have effectively doubled the number of colorful ink blotches on my skin. Yesterday I got tattooed with a bat between my shoulder blades and an adorable penguin (what other kind of prnguin is there?) on my shoulder. I went to Fun City (in NYC of course) and they are awesome. They do all sorts of celeb tattoos, and actually the day before I went in, the guy that inked me (Chuck) had done a tattoo for some girl whose punk band had just been on the Conan O'Brien Show.

I was just going to get the bat, but the guy gave me a "twofer" which ended up saving me money. They have a minimum of $100, and he did both for $150. (Plus, my unknowing family paid for more than half of it.) This is more expensive than any of my other tattoos had been, but everything is more expensive in NY. Plus, tattoos aren't the kind of thing you want to skimp on.

I learned a new trick: have a lollipop during the actual tattooing. This is the best for two reasons:
1) it keeps your blood sugar up so you don't pass out in the heat (I didn't - but I started to feel dizzy)
2) it gives you something to bite when the needle hurts too much.
The studio knows this already, and they keep a big jar of Tootsie pops handy. I had 2, one for each new tattoo. One was red and one was blue. What a great poem I just wrote.

Tattoos don't actually hurt that much. They feel like a cat scatch. Over and over again. As soon as the needle stops, it stops hurting (unless you keep hitting your new wound on things). They only really start to hurt when there is more bone than flesh (i.e. on your spine or your wrist) and the artist concentrates on one spot for a while without stopping to wipe off the excess ink and blood. Then it feels like your cat is scratching you relentlessly, and even the best of us would turn around and whack the cat. However, I do not recommend whacking the tattoo artist; you are paying for this pain, and if he or she messes up then you have to live with it forever.

Even people with needle problems can get inked because a tattoo needle is more like an electric paintbrush than a syringe needle. If des can look at it without being floored, I guarantee that you can. I could even watch when my friend got work done. Of course it was really hard to watch my own back getting tattooed, so I didn't try. But I could have stood the sight if I was more flexible.

Then I get all bandaged up with masking tape and gauze and set out on my merry way. My bra strap actually worked its way under the penguin bandage and both hurt more and and got a nice black smudge on the fabric. The smudge came out, due to my quick washing, but I'm assuming that my penguin will not wash off so easily. It hasn't yet. That's a good sign.

En route from the tattoo studio to the grocery store, we walked past a bar that was showing the Brazil v. Austrailia match of the World Cup. Evidently it was halftime because there were about 30 soccer hooligans showing their support for Brazil by clogging up the sidewalk and part of the street. I thought it would be funny to yell "Austrailia rules!" but I also thought that in my weakened state I would have trouble defending myself against all of them at once.

On my way home, I was delighted to find that the subway seats did not reach my still-fresh wounds so I could sit down and enjoy myself. Well, as much as you can enjoy yourself on a fairly dirty subway that is only slightly cooler than outside. However, I am discovering at work today that I cannot lean back in my chair because it hits both the bat and the penguin in innappropriate places, making me quite unhappy. This is weird because when I got home yesterday it felt really good to lean back on the pillows. So good, in fact, that I took a nice nap.

I woke up when it was time to remove the bandages, and luckily I have a boyfriend that loves me enough to do this for me and to subsequently wash the tattoos and apply smelly ointment to make sure I don't get an infection. And he loves me enough to do this a few times a day, because I have the darndest time reaching the center of my own back. But, because the ointment is smelly, I am paranoid that the people at work can also smell it and will ask what it's for. I have no problem showing off my awesome bat and cute penguin to normal people, but the people at work are not normal and I try to discourage conversation with them.

So that's my tattoo story. I will post pictures at some point, but they are still healing so they don't look right yet. But they still look awesome, because the artist knew exactly where to put them so they look like they belong there and have always been there (and always will). They line up with my muscles and stuff. Though I am still getting used to seeing them there. Plus, I am doing a lot more looking at my back in the mirror than I normally do.