I woke up this morning filled with the kind of nervous dread that feels just like coming down with the flu: it’s characterized by nausea, almost-feverishness, and an overwhelming desire to just lie in a dark room with closed eyes until the feeling passes. I know from experience, though, that lying in the dark not only doesn’t encourage the feeling to pass but also adds an overlay of feeling failed and pathetic. So I got up and put on pants and shakily walked to the corner to buy a green tea and a pb&j bagel, and I ate it on the subway on the way to see Emma, my tattoo artist.
I felt a little self-conscious just now typing “my tattoo artist.” I would never say “my hairstylist” though I guess I do sort of have one (her name’s Shiho!) There’s a certain weird sort of possessive entitled Jennifer Anistonness to saying “my” yoga teacher, “my” manicurist, “my” bikini waxer. These people obviously do not belong to anybody besides themselves. But here’s why it’s okay to call Emma my tattoo artist: would you feel self-conscious about saying “my doctor” or “my therapist”? Emma is a lot closer to those categories than she is to being some sort of aesthetician. Actually sometimes I feel like the only difference between Emma and a doctor or therapist is that she’s much, much more expensive.
Today when I came into the shop Emma was finishing up a consultation with a woman who’s getting sleeves because, now that she’s almost finished with acupuncture school, she’s totally sure she’ll never have another 9 to 5 office job again so she doesn’t have to hide her tattoos on her core the way she’s been doing. She had all kinds of incredibly specific ideas and visions and needs about what her first sleeve would be like, and she showed Emma (and me, because I happened to be there) pictures of intricately decorated Ukranian eggs, and talked about wanting fish because she has “a lot of fire.” Over the course of her tattoo consultation, I learned: that she’s Ukranian and Jewish, born there but raised here, that her husband’s name is Bear, that she has two kids, a boy and a girl, 4 and 2, and that she gave birth to the first (Caleb) when she was 24, that doctors didn’t think he would live but he did and is fine now, that she has always felt a psychic connection to Caleb but that Bear has been closer to her daughter since the very moment of conception (“We just made a baby, didn’t we?” he said). That she has stretch marks on her first tattoos and such low sensitivity to pain that she used to have 6 gauge rings in her nipples, but that her one tattoo that’s partly in her armpit made her cry involuntarily because of the nerves there. That she teaches yoga at her kids’ daycare. That she once damaged a freshly inked tattoo during a “moment of passion.” All of this stuff was going to inform the designs that Emma is going to put on this woman’s body.
At one point, the woman started talking about her ideas for her right arm, but Emma cautioned her against it. “It’s story, it has to tell itself in order. This arm will inform the other one.”
For the next few hours, as I sat alternately gritting my teeth and chatting with Emma, I thought about my tattoos telling a story. It’s a long story and maybe about as interesting as hearing about somebody’s dream they had. It starts with the little heart and then it goes to the fish swimming down my shoulder blades, the chrysanthemum on my right shoulder, the poppies on my right arm, the crown of thorns starfish on my left arm, and now the smaller starfish on my left shoulder. It’s definitely not over — in fact, I have another appointment in December to finish the shading work Emma started today. It’s the story of the last six years of my life since I moved to New York.
Emma is trying to have a baby with her partner John so we talked about that a lot. He only has two tattoos and she did both of them; she’s never been into guys with a lot of tattoos. I guess I haven’t either. I told her that Jake was the first guy I’d ever been with who had as many tattoos as I did and I described them to her: the “Mom” on one shoulder and the devil girl pinup on the other, the now-infamous portrait of Serge Gainsbourg on his back. “Ah, so he’s got Mommy issues and thinks all women are either idealized virgins or dirty whores, and he’s pretentious but he doesn’t care if you think so,” she said.
Tattoos really do tell a story!
I told her about William’s tattoo, the outlines of a band of stars that encircle his bicep, and how I’d always wanted him to go ahead and get the stars filled in. How, at several points in our relationship, he was just about to get the stars filled in, sort of like how he was just about to start riding his bike to work or start smoking less pot or start looking for a less shitty job.
“If you ever see him with those stars filled in, you’re going to have to marry him!” Emma told me. But I’m pretty sure that’s never going to happen.
