Courtney’s Thoughts:
Back when tattoos weren’t the art they are today, I walked into Tattoo City in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and picked a peace sign off a wall of poorly drawn icons. Like my first perm, my first tattoo was completed by a hack and faded fast. A couple of years later when I decided to cover it up, the Soundgarden song “Black Hole Sun” was all the rage, so, for reasons inexplicable to me, I have had a black-holed-sun on my left ankle for 28 years.
I blame my high school boyfriend, Brian Mancino, for both instances. I wonder how his pirate on a surfboard has held up.
This all happened in my late teens, early 20s. (Like my tattoo, my memory is also fading.) And while I do not remember the details of the tattoo experiences, I do remember my parent’s reaction. And it was not positive.
My parents were out of town, and my sister landed herself in the hospital. I had to call my parents to come back home. When they arrived at the hospital, I had my feet up and my father walked into my sister’s hospital room, ignored her completely, noticed my ankle and said, “What the hell is that?” (There is a pretty good chance he didn’t say “hell.”) All efforts to deflect attention back to my sister – did I mention she was in a hospital bed, and they had to return early from their Poconos vacation? – failed miserably.
Weeks later my parents visited me at my summer job where I was waiting tables. When paying their bill, instead of adding a tip they wrote, “Here’s a tip, lose the tattoo.” Humor runs in our family.
A year-ish later, when I graduated college and landed my first grown-up job, my mom went to Costco and bought an enormous box of four-by-four-inch Band-Aids and insisted on covering my tattoo each morning before I left for work – sometimes slapping it on herself as I walked out the door. She was certain that if my new employer saw my tattoo – I was working in the development office of a hoity-toity private school – I would be fired on the spot for being a bad influence. Honestly, a little rebellion never hurt anyone. Look how great I turned out.
Fast forward nearly three decades, and I have been playing repeatedly in my head a verse of a poem my father wrote. Ironically, that verse was how I ended last month’s column. Last month was also when I decided to tattoo that verse on my wrist. Somewhere I could see it – each time I wrote, typed, strung my own words together.
An incredibly talented and hilarious tattoo artist made my dad’s words permanent whilst regaling me with stories of people who didn’t proofread their words before the ink was applied; and that one time he messed up when transcribing a newlywed couples’ vows onto their bodies. “I love gou,” was an honest mistake.
Later that day, Barry posted on social media about his new tattoo. More irony. The two of us in tattoo parlors, on the same day, inking something meaningful. When we chatted later, we learned that both of our fathers were vehemently anti-ink.
So, it only seemed right that I put my father’s own words on my body, and Barry got his first tattoo on his late father’s birthday. I am sure if they are reading this, they are getting a laugh. Maybe they are even laughing together.
When I woke up the following morning, I looked at my wrist and said aloud, to myself, “This is part of me now.” No regrets. (Or regerts. If you know, you know.) No industrial size boxes of Band-Aids. No concerns about how my workplace would react. No panic about the artform being taboo.
Being a grown-up has its perks.
Courtney’s Ink
Barry’s Thoughts:
As Courtney probably mentioned in her half of this column, we both recently got tattoos on the same day by sheer coincidence. (I don’t really read her half of this column, so I’ll have to assume). Obviously, this was not something we had planned, but now I kind of wish we had. Because then Courtney, having already gotten inked up once before, could have warned this newbie about a few things.
First of all, I wish she’d told me how much they hurt, because OUCH, you guys!
I knew on an intellectual level going in that it would sting; by definition, the entire process revolves around someone using a needle to poke thousands and thousands of holes in your skin. And the skin, as all you biology majors will remember, is one of the main organs that doctors tell you not to poke a bunch of holes in.
At first it wasn’t bad, just a light tickling almost. Then he started “shading in” which entailed grabbing a different, far more medieval-style needle, and forcefully shearing away bits of me. That part hurt, to the point where I don’t understand how people can get tattoos on some of their more sensitive bits. My hats off to you, you magnificently pain-tolerant perverts.
And while Courtney might have had her own arbitrary reasons for picking that particular day, my choice was far more intentional. It was my daughter’s birthday, and the idea was for us to get semi-matching tattoos. I got the Triforce from the Legend of Zelda games, because I didn’t date much in high school. In one of the three triangles, I had the artist put half of an inside joke between the two of us, the other half of which is now on her ankle.
It’s a nice reminder of our father/daughter bond, and the design of it leaves spots in the other two triangles for my remaining kids to put a design on me. When she found out how much shading hurt, my youngest began pitching a black cat. My son, being a teenager, thinks the whole thing is dumb, and I can’t really argue that.
The thing is, though, it wasn’t just my daughter’s birthday, and here’s where I’m maybe a better dad than a son. Because it was also my dad’s birthday. According to my mom, he once claimed he’d disown one of us if we got a tattoo, and while my brothers and I couldn’t confirm he’d ever said that, we all agreed he would’ve thought about it. He just wasn’t the kind of guy who liked tattoos. So, getting one on his birthday was kind of a jerk move on my part.
Except that I managed to give him a little bit of a shout-out as well. The design of the Triforce leaves three triangles for my kids to fill in, with a fourth triangle in the middle holding it all together. That’s for my dad. He’s been gone almost 17 years, but he’s at the center of who I am as a father. And that middle part will remain uninked, unpoked, and unblemished in his honor.
I like to think he would have bought that excuse. Now I just need to come up with another one for when Courtney and I finally get our matching neck tattoos. Same time next year, Court?
Barry’s ink
