I haven't been publicizing it much except to a few people, but ive been thinking of inking myself of over the past several months or so, and as part of my new years' resolution to not be such a pussy, yesterday I finally bit the bullet. I have always been opposed to the idea of getting a 'safe' tattoo first, where I can hide it away, because I am unsure about it. I think if you're going to get something permanent on your body, you should do it with confidence, enough to get something that you're willing to see every day. So I did.
There is a considerable amount of care involved with keeping it from getting infected or blurring in the first few days, and I am lazy, so I took the day off from lab and have been sitting around in the 90s watching TV and napping and playing nintendo 64 and waiting for Cristina to get back and waiting for the basketball game (there has been a lot of time to do things, since I'm not doing any work - thus the run-on sentence). And I figure what better time to add my 4th or whatever blog to my budding literary publishings on this website, and muse about what I have done to myself and to the 3 or so other people that actually read the facebook close enough to see that I have a blog and care.
That was just 2 sentences. Or wannabe sentences; I guess there were problems with both.
Anyways, one of the things that is really strange about getting a tattoo (especially a first tattoo, of course) is that you're sitting in the chair and it's getting put on you and you are of course completely aware that there is no going back and you don't really have any desire to, but just the fact that you're irretractably involved in something that is going to influcence at least the next 20 years if not the rest of your life gives you really strong chills. It's kind of like a more personal version of what everyone felt when they first found out about 9/11, without all the negative parts - the knowledge that what has just happened is one of the most important and certainly lasting things that you will ever go through/experience.
And the rest of the night, it's looking at this thing on you that looks AWESOME and trying to get your mind around the fact that it will ALWAYS be there. It's just really mind-boggling. Of course, I was completely aware of all of the consequences of getting a tattoo beforehand - I in no way made the decision rashly, I had been planning this for some time now - but there's a difference between wanting to get a tattoo and planning to get a tattoo and then just having got a tattoo. Totally different world.
But all of that just really motivates you to really thoroughly and correctly take care of it, especially for the first two weeks or so when it can get infected and do most of the fading, because all of those things are true whether you do take proper care or not - if I get infected, I will still have a tattoo. It just won't look as good. So I am going to make damned sure I don't. That's harder than it sounds in the 90's - you don't want it to touch ANYTHING except the inside of a clean shirt (and even that's tenuous. I don't want it to be really rubbing hard against it, only lying gently) and your hands AFTER you have soaped them and have either soap or triple antibiotic on them. You can't let it get too wet, you don't want to expose it to sunlight, you can't let it dry out - really, constant care. In a way, you could say that this is preparing me for having a child because I imagine that includes a lot of the same feelings of permanence and responsibility and a confounding sense of the future mixed with extreme pride and happiness...
What a fucking hippie. Anyways, what I got is my ex-girfriend's name tattooed along the small of my back.
Just kidding, come see for yourselves, kids.
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