#1 -- bzzzzzz

You Guys, I got a tattoo. Let’s talk about it.

You totally want to be my friend now.

It is a rectangle on my left ribcage.  Hollow, border about a millimeter thick, 3 x 1.5 inches.  Don’t ask me the significance of it, I’m not going to tell you.  It’s not that it’s deeply personal or anything, it’s just that explaining it would fuck up the flow of my prose right now.  I’ve got a great flow going here.  Let’s return to the flow: my rectangle rocks, so I got in my Volvo and went to Georgetown to pick up Nathan and get it stitched into my skin.

I gave the guy at the front desk a drawing on graph paper of my tattoo because it was a rectangle and graph paper is made exclusively for drawing rectangles and nothing else (if you have drawn other things on graph paper, you’re doing it wrong) and that was the scrap of paper I found in my purse.  The tattoo receptionist fellow had lots of tattoos of his own, which I found fitting.  He said that mine was one of the more difficult tattoos he’s seen because it was straight and on a curved part of the body.  Only one of the three artists was willing to do it and the tattoo would be quite pricey.*  Nathan said that was probably also attributed to the fact that it was my first tattoo, which increased the possibility of me Flinching like a Bitch by precisely 4.8%.**

The fact that my potential legit-ness*** was being dissected by a guy wearing a Transformers t-shirt should have been a little boggling to me, but I’ve known Nathan for quite a while.  It’s not even some hip, vintage, found-you-for-a-dollar-at-a-Salvation-Army-bedbugs-thrown-in-4-free Transformers shirt from the 80s.  No, this is straight up movie merchandise form Revenge of the Fallen. Michael Bay himself has probably approved of this shirt.

However, Nathan has a bactat, a pectat, and bicep tattoos (those don’t get abbreviated), so he actually was in a position to critique my inking, regardless of what stupid shirt he decided to wear.  These are the kinds of privileges you get when you have sweet tattoos.

The cautious receptionist gave me quite a lot to think about.  Because if I somehow managed to mess up the tattoo, it would be worse than not having one at all, because it would be an undeniable physical manifestation of how I am a pussy.

I mean, come on, have you ever not sneezed for 20 minutes??  Most people have, but I could still really fuck this up, I thought.  I had really better think it over, I thought.

Here is how long I thought it over for: ten minutes.  In that time I ate a peanut butter chocolate cupcake and decided that 8 o’clock the next night would be the best time to get a tattoo.

here is what I assumed would happen:

here is what occurred:

This last panel is actually a bit of a hyperbole, because no sensible tattoo parlor located in Washington, DC would stock copies of Northwest Home.  You know which type of tattoo parlor would stock copies of Northwest Home? None of them.

But you know what it was really not that bad of a thing.  I’m not saying it was easy, it’s just more as if one of your friends was sitting next to you and decided to dig a needle that used to be on fire and was vibrating like a flaming hummingbird into your skin and kind of drag it around for a bit and you were like, “Wow.  What are you doing.  Stop.  You’re being a cunt.  I’m serious.  Ow.”  Not like seventh-circle-of-Dante’s-Inferno-flaming-hell-burning-you-to-the-bone/soul pain.****

I also got $40 cashback on what I paid.  I was told that this was because the tattoo didn’t go so far down that it hit the dip in my waist and, thus, become more difficult.  I like to think that it was my reward for not bitching out.

In conclusion, everyone should get tattoos. It just makes you cooler, and the gender of your choice will find you more attractive.

"I made out with my brother at a nationally televised red carpet event and you don't even care."

Plus, you ooze blue-black-InkyBlood overnight. It doesn’t get much more punk rock than that.

*"Don’t discuss money in public, it’s bad form. I also like your other sibling better.” –Your Mother

**all statistics on this site are made up unless noted otherwise

***in this context, “legitimacy” is not the noun we are looking for

****I have clearly never read Dante’s Inferno