On Joel's birthday, I got my first tattoo.
(Also worth noting: I recently chopped off all my hair!)
It wasn't ONLY about his birthday, but also about me wanting to do a bit of self-reclamation. Call it self-oil-rigging. I mean, yeah, it WAS on his birthday and that makes it memorable, particularly since the tattoo was designed by Joel and written in his handwriting.
But it was mostly about making my mandafesto part of me again.
Especially since it was my mandafesto that made Joel fall in love with me in the first place.
The weird thing is that I never wanted a tattoo, even though we live in tattoo city, where everyone from your waitress to your pediatrician has a full sleeve or their favorite Shakespeare quote written across their chest. From birth, it had been distilled in me that tattoo's were taboo and that no matter how great the idea seems at the time, you WILL REGRET IT. But the moment the idea of getting a one popped into my head, I said YES. Sure, that little voice inside my head said, "Mom's gonna HATE it!" but it turns out I'm not talking to my mom, in my head or otherwise.
So I had the man I love practice it a dozen times until I found just the right YES to put on my body.
Use your BEST penmanship, baby! It's gonna be there forever!
Finally, about ten minutes before my appointment, Joel drew his final draft on a receipt at Trader Vic's, where I was busy slamming down Mai Tai's in anticipation of the horrible, terrific pain to which I was about to subject myself.
It was perfect.
So I had Lucky Malony at Anatomy Tattoo put it on my neck.
Don't worry, no one knows better than me how strange it is to go straight from never wanting a tattoo EVER, to getting one on your NECK.
But I said YES. And I absolutely LOVE it. (Did I mention that YES is my favorite word? Because YES, YES it is.)
My only wish is that it had been more painful because it didn't hurt AT ALL. Even after Lucky started, I kept thinking, this is it? I would describe the sensation as annoying, particularly given its proximity to my left eardrum, but it took him all of eight minutes from start to finish and I smiled through the whole damn thing.
Which sucked! I actually wanted it to be REALLY painful. Worse than childbirth, even. I wanted the pain to remind me - in a detailed and memorably graphic way - that I'm a woman who SAYS YES.
I guess I'll just have to get another one.
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