I’m scared beyond reason of getting a tattoo I later regret. Every piece of art I’ve had inked on me – four so far – came after weeks or months of pondering the design, the meaning, the long-term ramifications. I diligently googled my chosen phrases and symbols to make sure they didn’t have some secret, sinister connotation. If I was going to welcome a piece of work onto my skin, I wanted it to be something I could be proud of, and uplifted by, forever.
This is also why I’ve never allowed a romantic partner to attend any of my tattoo appointments. Oh, they have asked. Two of my most serious ex-boyfriends – a tall, goofy-grinned man with shaggy ginger hair, and a short goth with a great laugh – had more tattoos than I could ever dream of wanting, and offered to accompany me to my inking sessions so they could share in that experience we both knew so well. I politely declined, not entirely explaining that I couldn’t sew a beau into my memory of a particular tattoo, because the ink would be forever, and the relationships would not.
I knew the evil way mementos associated with sad memories can suck the sparkle from your smile every time you look at them. I’d once kept a dime on my bedroom floor for over a year because someone I loved had dropped it there, and while the sight of it initially brightened my days, by the end of that period I had come to loathe it. It reminded me too much of not being loved back, of being abandoned – but it nonetheless took a lot of time and emotional energy for me to eventually decide to pick it up and put it away. With tattoos, you can’t even do that – you have to look at them forever, or spend gobs of cash having them removed or covered up. To me, it didn’t seem worth the risk to ink something on my skin that could be eternally associated with someone who’d broken my heart, or who I’d ultimately come to loathe. (I had not yet truly conceived of a relationship ending in any way other than these – or of a relationship never ending at all.)
But the truth is, every one of my tattoos reminds me of the people I was dating and/or fucking at the time that I got them, despite the care I took to make sure this wouldn’t happen. The red heart on my belly summons the memory of the boy who gingerly peeled my underwear off the day after, marveling softly at the needle-wounded flesh. The pink “good girl” bows on my thighs make me think of the dominant boy who encouraged me to get them, pinning me to his mattress on the floor and whispering, “You’re a good girl, and soon everyone will know it.” My “this too shall pass” wrist tattoos take me back to the morning I got them, and the then-boyfriend who ignored my excited “Check out my new tats!” texts for hours. The flowers on my right arm, and their accompanying slogan “Do no harm but take no shit,” remind me of Matt, with whom I’d just fallen hopelessly in love when I went to my appointment. The details of that day are carved into my memory the way so many days are when you’re awash with romantic hormones: I remember I took a picture of a blue wall because the shade reminded me of Matt, lovesick as I was, and that the owner of the tattoo shop asked me if my “pun slut” pin stood for “punishment slut” and I blushed because I wanted to be, and was, Matt’s punishment slut.