Written in 2017 for a University of Colorado course.
My cold hands squeezed the dimpled surface of the steering wheel. The heat was on full blast, encapsulating me in a little bubble of warmth from the wind that tried to blow my Bug off the pavement as I flew down the highway. I was familiarly jittery; my heart quickened as I pulled up to the huge wooden doors and pulled the freezing steel doorknob. The smell as I walked through the doors was recognizable and reminiscently surgical. Tattoo shops intimidate most people but I felt completely comfortable. A row of black leather reclining tables, matching stools for the artists, and small surgical tables that held the tattoo guns and the tiny plastic wells that would hold ink lined the back wall. Only one station was occupied when I walked in. The only sound came from the back corner of the shop, a fast, quiet buzzing. Occasionally, the artist in the last station spoke to the man he was tattooing, and then silence fell again except for the sound of the gun. Jupiter, my artist, sat at his desk, free-handing a combination of two flowers I told him I liked. I sat in a squishy leather chair next to an unlit fireplace as I waited for him to finish.
I have always been enamored with the idea that at birth our skin is a blank slate. As we grow up, it becomes covered with scars, birthmarks, freckles, bruises, tattoos. Each new addition to our skin becomes a memory or a story, evidence that we have lived and suffered. My mother always worries that I will regret decorating my body when I’m older. Every time she looks at my tattoos, she gets this grimace on her face and it looks like she could be sick, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to formulate an answer to her objections. I tell her that if something was important enough and meant enough to me at one point in my life, where I felt that wanted a tattoo to commemorate it, I won’t be able to call that a regret when I get older. There are also plenty of things that happen to our bodies over the course of our lives that aren’t voluntary, like the scars on my face that I got when I passed out from dehydration in Greece. If our bodies are going to be blemished anyway by forces out of our control, I’d rather choose my blemishes and make them something beautiful. People regret all kinds of things when they get older - not going cliff jumping, not traveling, not giving it another try with that person you were dating. But we accept that these things are past the point of reconciliation and let them go. If all I have to regret when I’m old is my tattoos, I’ll consider myself lucky.
Before I left for school in Massachusetts freshman year, I wanted some part of Colorado added to my skin. It was my first tattoo and I was nervous it would hurt but not nervous to get it done, I felt like being from Colorado was an important part of my identity. My dad is huge on tattoos, he’s working on completing an abstract half-sleeve from artwork my sister drew, so he came, and my mom ending up coming too, not really sure why. My dad and I told my mom we were just going to consult with the artist, when he asked me if I wanted to do it today, she completely panicked, which we thought was hilarious. She texted her friend and told her she was going to throw up. I chose to put mountains on my ribs, probably the most painful place for a first tattoo, also an incredibly cliche Colorado girl thing to do, but it was important to me at the time because I was going so far away from anyone I knew, I would be completely alone and I thought this tattoo would comfort me. My mom held my hand as I laid on the leather chair under a bright lamp and asked me to promise that this would be my only tattoo. I said no, but I think in her head she heard yes. A year and a half later was an intricate mandala that Jupiter created on my sternum that took two and a half hours and made my chest numb from all the tiny dots and lines injected under the surface of my skin. Another year and one emotional breakdown later I was back under the needle after about twenty minutes of self-deliberation to get a personal reminder to love myself on my left arm. Also cliche, but at the time, I needed it. I told myself that I could take my time to be sad while the tattoo was healing, but when it was done, I needed to be done being sad too. “Are you just going to get another tattoo every time something bad happens to you?” I rolled my eyes into next week. Would you rather me drink myself into oblivion? If getting tattoos is what it takes for me to feel better about myself, that’s what I’m going to to.
I laid back in the black leather tattoo table, pulled up the sleeve of my shirt, put my hand behind my head and closed my eyes. The electric buzzing appeared again, this time right next to my head. Rubber-gloved hands gripped my arm and my heart quickened. The tiny pulsating needle was brought to the surface of my skin, slowly dragging the deep, poking pain along my inner arm, creating the stem of the flowers I asked for. I took a deep breath of the sterile air as the needle was lifted away in preparation for the next line, I tried not to look down so the time would go faster. I never know what my tattoos will look like until my artist draws them for me right before putting them on my body. I put an immense amount of trust in my artist, but he hasn’t let me down yet and I think it’s exciting to be surprised, even if it is a lifelong commitment. Jupiter, a dark, heavy-set man, also completely covered in ink, cursive script, skulls, a multitude of other things that I only got a chance to glance at, wears his hair in a single black braid down his back. He doesn’t talk much, except for asking me if I’m happy with his drawing and checking the placement before he gets started. I listened to the weird rock-rap hybrid music that was playing and stared at the ceiling, occasionally glancing around to look at the pictures of OG, the owner, with Broncos linemen that covered the walls. He walked through the doors just as Jupiter was getting close to finishing, in from the dark that had already fallen. His hair was in two long braids down to his waist with a backwards snapback, just like always. I snapped back when the line strokes started getting more painful as Jupiter worked his way towards my armpit. I started wincing a little but tried to keep a straight face so he wouldn’t make me take a break. Finally, he swapped out the noisy needle for a tiny half needle that sounded so sweet and felt like a baby scratching my arm to draw the lotus-looking flower at the top of the interwoven stems and leaves.
Two years earlier, I opened my eyes to see my family and a train full of Greek people staring down at me as I sat up from my recent face plant. What the fuck just happened? They handed me water and tissues; apparently my face was bleeding. Seconds earlier I had been standing upright, holding onto my suitcase, happy to be going home after a week in Greece. Suddenly, a wave of heat washed over me. It was already hot on the crowded train but my face was burning all of the sudden and I started to sweat. Black spots appeared in my eyes, I tried to blink them away but they wouldn’t go. I realized what was happening, I had experienced the same thing at a concert a while back, and reached for something to grab onto but not in time to stop myself from falling to the ground face first. My dad had ironically been talking about his cat-like reflexes earlier that day and asked him why he didn’t catch me when he saw me falling, in a sarcastic tone that I had learned from him as soon as I was old enough to talk. A stranger handed my mom some bandages to cover the gashes where my face had been cut open by my glasses. My glasses weren’t broken, thank god — just my face. We were on our way to the airport and initially thought of this as an unfortunate experience, nothing too serious, and stopped at the airport’s medical office to check in before getting on our flight to Belgium. I’m glad I didn’t see my own face because I probably would have thrown up on the nurse’s shoes. The cuts were so deep that you could see the bone in my face, the nurse obviously recommended we go to a hospital immediately. Greek hospitals are nothing short of chaotic and they don’t do insurance due to the failing economy so everyone has to pay in cash. Luckily, we scraped up enough to see a plastic surgeon and waited, surrounded by people talking loudly in a language we could not understand. At this point, I finally realized how much pain I was in and the loud, monotonous lull of everyone speaking and running around was not helping, I’m sure I must have started crying at this point. It was finally my turn so I stood up with my mom, they stopped her and told her she wasn’t allowed to come in with me because I was over 18. Sure, just send me back into a room by myself in a foreign country, but they were not having it with our American attitudes. I sat in a reclined chair and the doctor said he was going to numb my face and before I even had time for my phobia of shots to kick in, needle in the face, twice. I sat there in silence, terrified, as the plastic surgeon sewed up my face while having a full on conversation with the nurse and didn’t seem to be paying attention to me. Twelve stitches later I was back together with some horrifying white gauze taped to my face, which everyone stared at until we got back to the states and I could take it off, I’m pretty sure I also cried about this.
I was left with two scars, one on my brow bone and one on my cheek bone. At first when the stitches came out, I was determined to make sure I wouldn’t have scars; I put on the cream my mom got me every day. However, the more I thought about it, the more stupid it seemed to do this. It wasn’t realistic to think that my face should be completely free of any markings. After all, I had freckles that smattered my nose and cheeks after being in the sun, and as hard as I tried, I almost always had a zit or two. I stopped putting on the scar cream and just let my face heal on its own. My mom yelled at me but I told her I thought it would make a good story someday. If I went through life without obtaining any scars, I would feel like I hadn’t lived. Even though scars are usually accidental, they often mark something adventurous or exciting that happened to you. In my opinion, a life lived so cautiously that nothing bad ever happens to you is a life not lived at all.
I stood up from the chair that I had been lying in for the last hour and walked across the floor to the mirror on the wall to admire my new tattoo. Thick stems became thinner as they wove their way up my arm and branched off into smaller stems that were drawn so lightly the ink looked gray, not black. Leaves and tiny buds sprouted at the ends and finally at the top, there was a single flower that looked something like a lotus mixed with a rose. No one else in the world has this tattoo. Despite all the other ways I conform, in this way, I am completely unique. My arm is toned in the mirror now but I thought of my mother reminding me that my skin will be saggy when I get old. Will I like the tattoos then? I’ll just look like a cool old lady with tattoos. No one is immune to time, everyone will get wrinkly and saggy and old, I’ll just happen to have tattoos as well. I went home that night, my skin still a tender open wound that was not bleeding. I asked my mom if she wanted to see my new tattoo. “You didn’t get another tattoo.” I tried to tell her I did, but she walked away, obviously in complete denial. It wasn’t until a day later when my dad brought it up that she realized I wasn’t kidding. I went upstairs and looked at in the mirror some more. I thought of quote that I read somewhere, I’ve forgotten where but it has always stayed with me. “Your body is a temple, decorate the walls.” And what better way to decorate the walls than with flowers? This tattoo didn’t have as much meaning to me as my other three, I just wanted something pretty on my skin, but it was a welcome addition to my collection and fit right in. Years from now, I will look back at these pieces of art on my body, the ink will have faded and dissolved into my skin, making the sharp lines blurry. They might not mean anything to me anymore, maybe they will, I don’t know yet. But I will be able to look back at them and remember the really good times and the really bad times that are associated with each one and remember exactly how I felt when I got them. They will likely be joined by other tattoos as I continue living my life, other scars, brought upon by events I can’t even imagine now. The significance of each will be unknown to the passerby, but will tell a detailed account of my life story as I am writing it, each new addition to my skin a new page.
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