multiple stabbings
No, I’m not talking about my Discworldsona, Multiple Stabbings (they/them, probably a student member of the Assassin’s Guild???). I got a tattoo yesterday! It looks like this:
And it will look even better when I take off my dressing and wipe away the seepage.
I am, unfortunately, a tattoo guy. I became a tattoo guy largely by accident, when my grandfather (extremely sweet, now somewhere in the ballpark of 94 years old) told me that tattoos would make me look common. He was in the process of complimenting my newly-dyed blue hair at the time, so it was hard to be actively annoyed at him; I do have this regrettable “fuck you, make me” reflex, though, which kicked in instantly. I got my first tattoo a few weeks later, a graduation gift to myself. It’s a little blurry at this point, but it’s still there, and I still treasure it.
A nice thing about tattoos is that they tend to come with stories like that. The depth and weight of the stories may vary, but even “idk I just went for it lol” is a story. For instance: I have Sylvia Plath’s signature tattooed on my left shoulder because a former colleague gave me £50 and insisted that I do it. He’d been getting authors’ signatures tattooed on his shoulderblade for months, one after the other, and I’d been ragging on him for only getting signatures by men. It would have been unfeminist to back down when he gave me the money. The tattoo took maybe half an hour. Suck it, Redd.
I wouldn’t choose Plath’s signature again, probably, but I chose it then, and that matters. Every tattoo is a small testament to a place and time gone by. The ocean wave on my right arm was paid for with the first money I ever earned from writing. The white cedar branch on my collarbone was, functionally, my engagement ring; Isaac has a similar branch to match. The graduation tattoo is a line from a poem that kept me believing I’d make it to graduation in the first place. I would pick different poetry now. That doesn’t matter. What I chose then is still meaningful, because it meant something at the time.
Which brings me to this tattoo. I went to the artist (Carolyn LeBourgeois at Black Heart Tattoo in SF, a genius, cannot recommend her work highly enough) with a very simple brief: put the Transamerica Pyramid on my arm. Without wishing to doxx us, I can see the Transamerica Pyramid from my apartment window. It’s the last thing I see before I draw the curtains at night. It is trans. It is America. It is the most beautiful and distinctive thing on the San Francisco skyline. It glows in the sun and it disappears in the fog and it helps me gauge where I am in relation to home. Also, I have another triangle design on my right arm, and I thought two triangles would look neat in opposition.
Also – sorry, I don’t mean to kill the vibe – I have no idea where we’re going to be a year from now, as a country or as a couple. If we have to leave, and I hope we don’t – but if we do, I wanted something to commemorate my time in a city I love with all my heart.
Carolyn took all that and ran with it. The flowers are California poppies (the state flower) and forget-me-nots (for obvious reasons). The sun is setting, or rising; nobody’s quite sure. The fog swirls around the base of the tower, but it can’t make it disappear. The sunlight shines on the windows. It’s everything I wanted, and now it is on my skin until I die.
The current moment has made me wretchedly sentimental. Pictures of protests make me want to cry. Headbutts from my cat feel like benedictions from God. The tattooing process, at times, hurt like a motherfucker; it turns out the thin skin on your inner arm is not a super fun spot for serious colour work. But it felt worthwhile. I would love San Francisco all over again, no matter how it hurt. I would go quietly inside my own bones, count the rectangle shapes in the studio to keep my mind on anything other than pain. There’s something meditative in it, after a while; a keen awareness of the temporary nature of all human pursuit. It’s just two hours. It’s worth it. You’ll be happy that you did it in the end.
It’s proving harder to write these days, because I am increasingly aware of my own precarity here. My permanent residency doesn’t feel all that secure, and I’m trying – for my little family’s sake – to be mindful of what I put out into the world under these new conditions. But I wanted to tell you about this. It was a cool experience. I already want to do it again.
I love you. Life is short and troubling; go and fall in love with something stupid.
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