Hipster … Not!

I got inkedin 2009.

In the tatoo parlour, a woman, an employee, was sitting in a red chair (hint) by the door, like nothing horrendous ever happened in that shop.
I on the other hand …

I had just come from the tropical island of Kwajalein landing in Honolulu (the island people … well everyone calls it ‘Hono’) on my way home and to get my Rite-of-Passage tattoo.

I never had a tattoo yet my daughter has about 20 to this date (and counting!). So in my naviete I thought getting inked was a fairly easy process. Hell, everyone has one or two or three or twenty or, their entire body covered. How bad could it be?

I wanted a dolphin tattoo around my ankle and star/sun type thingie at the nape of my neck. Unlike the grrl in the red chair, by the door, my back fat encroached on the nape of my neck rendering it ‘no land to place a tattoo.’ So, my star/sun is in the back fat. But, I digress.

The idea for the dolphins came when I was on my way to the tropical island of Kwajalein and the airbus/plane stopped on the island of Majoro to pick up passengers. As I looked out the plane window I saw a school (would that be a school or a gang) of dolphins leaping in the Pacific ocean! I cannot explain how incredible the sight was other than to say … that the sight was … incredible. It was my welcome to the Marshal Islands.

Soooo, back to my tattoo in Hono (stay with me now).
I pick my designs and stuck to them (uncharacteristically, I change my mind like a food addict promising ‘no more cheesecake’).
I did wanted … a Buddhist prayer bead design. It’s freakin’ sweet (probably the first time the word, ‘freakin sweet’ has been used with Buddhist prayer beads).

So, I’m sitting backwards on the chair (which is another challenge I’m 42 DD so much for the comfort factor) for my ankle design … the dolphins. Next to me is a young Japanese guy who speaks no English … his sister and friend are there to translate for him.
This kamikaze (no slur intended) is laying quietly on the table with his arm across his forehead getting his entire right calf inked with a flame design (I realize now that he had to be high or drunk or passed out). This dude is just laying there like ‘Hey, it’s nothing.’

My turn …
I kid you not, the moment the inking started, the sound of the inking gun, I knew I had made major miscalculations.
The pain … no let’s not call it pain … that is too simplistic with not enough detail or intensity for what I experienced. Actually, I have no vocabulary for the sensations, the thoughts and the internal madness albeit mental chaos, I went through (actually, I could be describing a near-death event).

Imagine someone taking a dull spoon and ripping thru your flesh with that spoon while you pay them to do it!
And you (like a good grrl) lie/lay (WTF) still (like marital sex) and wait for it to be over … soon.

At one point I think I really wanted to black out! I kiddingly … NOT KIDDING asked if they had a padded tongue blade or a padded spoon I could bite down on (other than the spoon they were using for my tattoo) … they ignored me.

I swear to God I was doing everything to psyche myself out during the inking: going to another place … imagining that the process was over … having out-of-body experience(s) … thinking how pissed off my husband would be when he saw my tattoos … as he hates tattoos.

My tattoo guy – is/was a good artist.
But, I greatly underestimated the pain factor … and I’m good with pain (as strange as that sounds. But, what former married woman isn’t?)

Which led me to think while trying to withstand that bit of Nazi torture that everyone who inks their body is … sadomasochistic … or still mad at Mommy & Daddy (husbands fit here as well) … will do anything trendy … bows to peer pressure … thinks inking is a show of individualism (even if everyone is doing it) … or thinks inking is a walk in the park (I fit all the descriptives).

When Scott finished my ankle tattoo (as I was holding on to consciousness … barely) the grrl in the red chair, by the door, asked how I felt and if I was ready for my second tattoo. I mentioned perhaps (obviously) incoherently that perhaps I did not need the second tattoo and she laughed it off and Scott got started. Holy Shit!

Okay, I am an adult. I had a mortgage, kids (including then, a husband-now an ex), I’ve saved a few lives (yes I have!) I’ve travelled the world and count myself as somewhat intelligent. Yet, I could not get outta that parlour. The overachiever HAD to complete the mission. What kinda crazy shit is that??

Sooo, another spoon gouging 20 minutes or so, I don’t know … I was somewhere between here and there and somewhere and there again.
On that table in the parlour I identified with the prisoners at Abu Ghahib/Gitmo, clubbed baby seals, the beheaded by ISIS, and women who undergo female circumcision (yes, I politically choose the descriptive, circumcision over female genital mutilation).

Anyway, I have two beautiful tattoos and a slight idea of what a Nazi death camp member felt like.
And that folks, wraps up my adventure in hipsterism and inking.©

Adrienne Zurub
author/speaker/comedian
the grrl with two new tattoos to the utter dismay … well, anger of her now ex-husband. It worked he’s gone. No pain … no gain.

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author of “Notes From the Mothership The Naked Invisibles”