Inked.

I got my first tattoo on Saturday night when I was visiting some friends in New York. Here's how it went down.

I had wanted a tattoo for a while, but I hadn't known what to get. I was waiting for when I felt attached enough to something, and knew of the right place to put it. Spoiler alert: I found that something. I decided on the semicolon because it's my favorite punctuation mark, as you may have gathered from my sign-off line. It's just so...sexy and original, the way it links separate clauses but still somehow unites them. I try to use semicolons in my writing as much as I can because they're so much more original than commas and periods. I love them so much, I decided to get one inked onto my skin permanently. As for the positioning, it's behind my right ear. I've always had a particularly strong right brain, which is known as being the "literal" side. I wanted my tattoo to honor that. A more lyrical way to justify the placement of my newest addition would be "Something by my brain, because I am a writer at heart."

So I had known that I wanted this for a while. There are a ton of tattoo places in Amherst and Northampton, but something about going to New York for a night of spontaneous shenanigans made me feel like I should get it done on St. Marks Place. St. Marks is somewhat of a mecca for impulse decisions regarding bodily modifications; I had gotten my nose pierced there, bought hair dye there, and gotten my second ear piercings there. Now I can say I got my first tattoo there.

I was really, really nervous beforehand. The long-ish wait for an available artist dragged it out sufficiently. By the time I was in the guy's studio, my heart was pounding and I was nearly hyperventilating. He seemed to take forever to assemble the needle. I was thankfully sitting down, resting my upper body on the table. Otherwise I may have fainted. I probably looked pretty pathetic, getting so freaked out about a tiny tattoo behind my ear when the artist had one on his penis.

*Sidenote* I didn't see that tattoo. My friend asked which one of his tats hurt the most and that was his answer.

When he was ready to begin the job, he neared the buzzing needle to my ear, and I stiffened. It was a horrible, horrible sound. Like a drill that the dentist only uses when you're nearly asleep with Novocaine. I told him to wait, that I was really freaked out. I honestly give the guy credit for not laughing at me when he asked why. After I nearly cried in his studio, he rubbed some numbing gel behind my ear, and after insisting it wasn't a placebo (I asked multiple times) he went to work.

Maybe that's an overstatement. The tattoo took maybe 30 seconds to complete. But I knew it wasn't much of a job. What did surprise me was the lack of pain. It felt maybe like a needle being dragged across my skin. Just dragged, with maybe a few pricks here and there. It hurt far, far less than any of my piercings. After a little bit, I didn't even need Ali to hold my hand anymore. The combination of the relief and the satisfaction with the finished product left me positively giddy as we walked out of the tattoo parlor.

In celebration, we opted to smoke some cigars. As we stood on a street corner and tried to get them to stay lit amidst the late February wind, we quipped that we looked like a bunch of new fathers. We were, in a way. To the little drops of ink forever embedded into my skin.

Peace, Love, and Semicolons (!!!)
Lisa