Not Inked Yet

It turns that that, while I am ready to get a tattoo, I’m not ready to be in a tattoo parlour.  I got as far as the shop, full of adrenaline and ready and prepared to have someone create a wound on my arm and shove a foreign substance in it in order to leave a permanent scar behind.  I knew what I wanted, I knew what I was prepared to negotiate and I knew what sort of fuss and bother I was about to make for myself.

But then, I was standing in the shop, waiting for the tattooist to come speak to me… and I started to look around.

It was clean and modern – looked kind of like a barbershop or hair dresser.  I suppose that’s what “not terrible” tattoo parlours look like these days.  Ironically, I would have felt more comfortable if it had looked more like a dentist’s clinic, but you get that.

I started looking at the pictures on the wall.  The ones they have in the waiting room to give you something to point at and say “I want that!” if you came in without a good idea of what you wanted – and also the ones they had in the work area, over the chairs.

The artwork was starting to creep me out a little bit, and then I noticed that some of the pictures in the work room were “artistic” photographs of actual piercings of intimate body parts.  Okay, they do body piercing in this joint and it’s not unreasonable for them to advertise that sort of thing on the wall, but still…

The more I looked at the pictures and at the woman who was probably going to be doing my tattoo, the more I was overcome with a sense that this was not my place, and these were not my people.  I didn’t belong here.  I didn’t want to have something so close to me done here.

This was going to be my first tattoo.  You don’t get another chance to have your first tattoo. I had chosen a design that had a good story behind it – a bright and shining story that was worth commemorating with my first tattoo.

I didn’t want to add to that story the fact that I got the tattoo in a place with pictures of pierced schlongs on the wall.

I chose that particular place because I looked a few places up on the internet and I liked the sound of it and I liked the look of their portfolio.  But now I know that, for me, I have to like the vibe of the joint when I walk in.

And... I didn’t.

So, I’m not inked, yet.