skin

Devoted readers of this blog (Are there any of you still out there? No one's posting comments!) may have noticed that my entries have become decidedly more personal, focusing less and less on world events and social problems and more and more on me. Perhaps this is an inevitable degeneration. I'm not going to try and fight it by writing a post about the revolution in Kyrgyzstan or anything like that. After all, it's my birthday this week, so I deserve it! (I've been saying that a lot recently -- it's a wonderful rationalization.)

I love New York during the first days of spring. Specifically, I love the East Village at this time of year. There's nothing quite so enjoyable as walking down Avenue A on a sunny evening or afternoon and watching the street life. One should be wearing sandals or (preferably) flip-flops. One should have nowhere to go really. And one should walk with a particularly aimless gait.

I've been told all my life, by everyone, that I walk fast. It's just natural to me -- I want to get where I'm going and I book it like a maniac. That's just the natural pace at which my legs move and sometimes I think it makes me appear prissy or uptight, like I'm running around with a stick up my ass. But on a walk like the one I took yesterday -- walking for no reason past Tompkins Square Park and all the funky little sidewalk cafes, the boutiques and bars, picking up a pineapple-papaya-mango smoothie -- I just SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. Naturally, without even trying.

My walk was not completely without purpose. It was a sort of fact-finding mission. I popped into a few East Village tattoo parlors because I've decided to get an image inscribed on my skin. Yes, that's right. I'm going to pay to have myself scarred. (I read this website called something like "Tips for Teens: Should You Get a Tattoo?" that was very insistent on letting the teens know that a tattoo was actually a scar.)

Why am I doing this, you might ask. Sadly (and I did confess that this blog has degenerated), I think the primary reason may be because I've hooked up with a couple of guys who have tattoos and I think it's really hot. Or, more frankly, I have some crazy idea that getting one will make me hotter. And I know that that's not true, of course. But whenever I do think of what it will be like to have one, my mind jumps to me waking up in bed with someone looking at it, both of us naked and loving each other. My crazy logic could be reduced to: "tattoo on skin = boyfriend in bed." Which is absurd.

But I'm gonna get it anyway. Some people are for it, some totally against. Almost everyone seems surprised, though. One person said to me, "I think you should definitely do it. It's so out of character." He was both right and wrong.

A tattoo is (literally) a character imprinted on your skin. If it seems out of character for me to have one, that's only because looking at me from the outside you don't see my innermost character -- my desire, my vulnerability, my sensuousness. All of those lusts and insecurities that drive me and make me think about skin and touch and nakedness. All of that's buttoned up.

Tattoos are externalizations of desire. They're like journal entries or creative writing assignments or blog entries that you wear on yourself. That's probably what makes them somewhat inappropriate for polite company. Some people don't want to see the internal externalized. It's a bit unseemly.

Getting a tattoo -- whatever the image may turn out to be -- is, for me at least, another form of "coming out." Acknowledging my sexual desire seemed unseemly, too. My rationalization for that was always, "Well, I admit -- to myself -- that I have those feelings but I don't have to act on them." Just speaking about your sexuality -- bringing it out into the open -- completes you, unifies you, makes you whole. (I sound like Lynn Redgrave at the end of Kinsey!) It breaks down internal barriers and creates a healthy kind of transparency between different parts of oneself. So why not put a picture on my skin? There's more than a bit of edginess, of sensuality inside of me. Why not be more transparent? Why not wear my insides like a new set of clothes?

I don't want to over-analyze the significance of this image I'm planning to get. Because I don't think the picture itself, the character, has to define me. I also am not saying that everyone in the world needs to get a tatoo in order to self-actualize. But I sort of feel like I do. At least, I do right now. And it almost doesn't matter what the image is (within reason). It's more about the choice, the risk, the confidence, the willingness to display. It's the physical imprint of a year and a half of changes going on in me. It's a scar from all of those growing pains, but a healthy scar. Scars are reminders, too.

So, what's it going to be? And where? I'll get back to you on the second question, though I'm now thinking it'll be somewhere on my back. As for the image, I've been playing around with the idea of an olive branch, which seems simple, classy, and in-line with my philosophical outlook. But I've also been thinking of this image and I can't quite shake it.

It's a little bit weird and embarrassing maybe to have a medieval pelican tattooed on one's body. Bur it's also distinctive. There's a whole history to the medieval conception of the pelican as a symbol of Christ.

Of all the images I've considered getting, it's probably the one that tells you the most about who I am and the kinds of things I think about. It tells you a lot more than just "I think it's hot to have a tattoo," which is unseemly enough in and of itself. For all those reasons, it may be too revelatory to wear around, to have exposed on me for the rest of my life (barring laser surgery, of course). But, then again, maybe that's what I need to reveal.