#55. or, tattoo part two

  About 2 weeks back, i went to see a really talented lady at Bittersweet Tattoos. Her name is Jodie. For the most part, she is an exceptionally talented artist. An exceptionally talented artist, who decided that the medium through which she was going to display her work, would be on other peoples bodies. She is an up most professional, and although i can say i was nervous about the procedure, i can't say that i was nervous at all about having her bring the image that i had in my head, to the piece of artwork that she put on my body yesterday.


   When we first met that day, i brought along a picture of the fake tattoo of the tribal sea turtle that i got in Mexico. I had been pretty sure that that was the image that i wanted to go with. I kind of liked it, i was comfortable with it, and i was ready to go. This is the picture that i brought to her that day. 

i think this may be the symbol of the Hawaiian mafia

  After talking with her and looking at other pictures of sea turtles, i decided that what i really wanted was to stay with the sea turtle, but go with a more traditional looking picture. We went over the process, and she assured me that the location that i had chosen was going to hurt. A lot. Apparently, it seems that the spot i picked, my left boob, is an area chock full of nerve endings. I had picked it because, aside from being a nice discrete place to have a tattoo, my left boob (as well as my right one, for that matter) is rather fluffy. I thought of all the soft spots on my body, that would be the least painful. Jodie told me i was wrong. It turns out that this process was going to be nothing at all like the one that took about 15 minutes on the beach in Mexico with a glorified sharpie.

  Over the course of the last week or so, we corresponded through a series of e-mails. She drew up the image i decided on, i had her tweak it a bit, then yesterday, i went in for the 3 hours she had me booked for, to have her permanently tattoo it into my skin.

  Now, over this last week, i've been talking to a few of my friends that have tattoos. The consensus was, that this was going to hurt. I was going to spew profanity, and quite possibly consider doing harm to this poor woman. I didn't want that to happen. In my head, which can be rather dramatic at times, i had imagined that this was going to be somewhere between experiencing  having a beaver with a chipped tooth, gnaw through my flesh and someone do doodle arts on my tit with battery acid. (neither of which i had experienced before, but it was about the worst i could imagine.) I have to say though, it wasn't so bad at all. I mean, it wasn't the most enjoyable of experiences but i think it was more unpleasant than painful. That being said, i was pretty happy when my three hours was up and she was finished. This is the final product.

  

    Jodie was telling me, over the course of the 3 hours, that during the process of learning how to tattoo, she practised on fruit. I was interested by this and wondered which fruits were the most similar to human skin. She said that grapefruit was the closest but she also liked to tattoo bananas because they were nice to cut into and see how different pressures penetrated the skin. I think i resemble a grapefruit, but i certainly know a few guys that resemble a kiwi.

  This morning, everything still looks alright. For the most part, it feels like i have a sunburn in that spot. She told me, that like a sunburn, it is still going to peel. I'm not really looking forward to that but it's part of the process so it's all good i guess.

  ...............i apologise for not showing you a full upper torso picture of my wonderful body. You're pretty safe though if you imagine Ryan Reynolds. You should probably also imagine Ryan Reynolds after a few years of excessive doughnuts and too many beers. I'm working on that.