OUCH !!

Gone are the days of haphazardly baking yourself in the sun for hours with Wesson cooking oil or baby oil.  As a replacement, we are saddled with sunscreens galore and checking our bodies for new 'things' that weren't there before, including bumps, lumps and spots.  I have a vaccination, some chicken pox marks, some scars from cuts and stitches and all kinds of other marks on my body, but the invasion of my tattoo was pretty shocking, and hard to wrap my head around.  What once was a bare palatte now has this thing on it.  It's hard to digest.  I can't imagine how I'd feel if it were larger than a 3" x 3" area.

As usual, I over-analyzed the whole process... I wondered how I would feel about having this on my body and not being a tattoo virgin and all that comes with my new-found status as a bad-ass (staying out late, picking up stray women, buying a Harley, getting a leather biker outfit and matching Pit Bull)... and for this relatively conservative, living-on-the-edge suburban boy... it's all fun and games until you get pricked by the tattoo needle.  Along with that was my analyzation of the pain that was going to happen and how I'd react to that.  I was curious to see, as I've heard stories, if I would have actually 'enjoyed' the pain, in an S and M kind of way.  I can assure you, that was the furthest thing from my mind. 

Imagining a certain kind of pain without ever having endured it is literally impossible.  How can you imagine a tiny little bee sting if it's never happened to you... and as 'tiny' as it sounds, those mother-F'ers pack a lot of pain in such a little prick.  I think that it turned out to be less than what I imagined (me crying or passing out or seeing stars), but the actual pain was excruciating at times and something that I couldn't even have conjured in my head.  Not having any idea what I was going to feel, I can honestly say that it felt like she was stabbing into my skin and dragging the needles back and forth or rubbing sandpaper.  I immediately broke out in a cold sweat, but once we got through it, some areas hurting less than others, I got used to it.  Having the stencil put on... it's a totally different ball game when you start to see the design come to life and excitement replaces fear and pain.

I've seen some bad tattoos in my life, so I was a little worried as to how it was going to turn out.  Once I saw the stencil of the changes that Cara made, I had total confidence in what she was going to do and her abilities.  I'm thrilled with it... it turned out much better than I imagined.  We were able to color the heads of the push pins... and if you look hard enough (hard to see until is heals fully) you will see ROYGBV... the gay flag.  Since there were ten pins and we didn't think of just doing 6 for the gay flag colors, we had to use colors over again.  Using only 6  to not repeat colors would be the only thing different that I would have done.

They say there's only two types of people... people who get one tattoo and stop... or people who get many.  There doesn't seem to be anyone who gets just two.  Which kind of person will I be?  I can't say I'd be willing to do it again any time soon.. but there are some things that I would like to get done... only time will tell if I get more.  I can now check 'tattoo' off my bucket list.

I wanted to thank my friend Kyle for encouraging me to go for it... for holding my hand through the whole process and introducing me to his friend, Cara, at Black Cat Tattoos... who has a great, artistic talent.

Anyone have any ideas for naming the little bugger?