What I did on my 22nd birthday September 28, 2004 ~ 2:23 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , trackback
I did that. I went to my alma mater for Homecoming Weekend, because my two best friends were still attending school there, and we drove to Erie, PA, and went to a spiffy little Quonset hut called “Buddha’s Body Art.” And my friend Kim L. and I got tattooed. She got the Tibetan symbol for “Om” tattooed on her lower back. I got a Def Leppard tattoo on my inner right ankle.
Those of you who are Lep fans probably already know where I got this design from. I’m not the only one who has it, or some variation of it. I took the triangle from the cover of Hysteria and the star from the cover of Slang, combined them, and there you have it. I had spent the night before in Johnstown watching da Leps play on the next to last show of the Euphoria tour.
You want to know what I remember most about the whole tattoo experience? Not so much that the girl who was there ahead of us had to get up three times to puke (she hadn’t eaten that morning and I guess the pain of getting a giant Winnie the Pooh tattooed on her calf was wearing on her). Not so much that to see if I could “take the pain” the tattoo artist took the needle for a little trip around my ankle without ink in it (all of the pain, no half-tattooed leg to be stuck with if I was a wus). Nor yet the whole “I am making the biggest mistake of my life here, and Mom’s gonna kill me when I show this to her.” queasy feeling I got prior to sitting in the chair. Not even the guy who, when I told him where I wanted my tattoo, said “You ever had a tattoo before? No? Well you’d better sit goddamned still.” (apparently near bones are not a great place to get tattooed your first time out).
While I obviously remember all of that, what I remember most is this: my dumbass friends (and I say this with love, Kim and Dawn) running around outside the window I was facing to take my mind off the needle. They weren’t allowed back in the tattoo area to hold my hand, so they did what they could. I love my friends.
And I also loved my free bumper sticker that said “Buddha’s Body Art: Hell, yeah, it hurt!” Wonder where that went?
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