Mini-sabbatical day six: The tattoo

(Sorry for the posting delay, I wanted to make sure this was well-written.)

For those of y'all who don't know, after last year's Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona, I finally knew what I wanted to get as a tattoo — the logo of the CPWR. It took me a year to work up my courage, get my upper arms in shape and find a tattoo artist I trusted.

The second two items are related, since I ended up meeting Noodles (the artist who did my work) at the gym. I overheard him mentioning to one of the trainers that he works at Tomato Tattoo. My curiousity was piqued because a friend-of-a-friend had recommended going to Tomato. We struck up a conversation and he suggested I stop in.

Eventually Janelle and Brad convinced me to go visit Noodles about a month ago. We stopped in, I was impressed with the cleanliness of the shop and Noodles' professionalism, and I watched him work on a client for about twenty minutes. The next weekend I dropped off my design and we made an appointment. I then immediately left a voicemail for Janelle asking her to come with me.

I woke up yesterday feeling rather excited and not as nervous as I expected to be.

I picked up Janelle at 11:45 and we went to my favorite Irish pub for lunch, where we were served very bloody hamburgers. Incidentally, Janelle kept telling me stories involving gore and blood, which made me a bit woozy. It was kind of funny, but anyone who knows me knows I get a little lightheaded when I hear those kind of stories. She was not doing it intentionally, it was just anything that we talked about ended up involving mauling.

At 1:00, we arrived at Tomato for my appointment. Noodles was there, and he had my design photocopied out a bit larger than I'd expected. And then he said it was still a bit smaller than he'd suggest. He explained that the sixteen little triangles that form the center circle were too fine and a little too close together to hold up well. He said the design would stay crisp for about ten years, but after that they'd start to bleed together.

He suggested taking out eight of the middle triangles. I wasn't convinced, so we scanned the image into Photoshop and erased them there. Once I saw it, I thought it looked good.

He gave me some time to think about it, as well as to think about the size and placement. I knew I wanted it on my shoulder, but I wasn't sure about going quite so large with it. He cut the design out of the paper so Janelle could hold it up to my shoulder, and I agreed the larger version was better.

He then made the carbon-paper transfer and we got the design positioned perfectly.

I watched him set up his workstation, unwrap the new needles (which I didn't look too closely at, because I didn't want to know how big they were), disinfect and wrap everything in plastic and the kind of plasticized paper they use at the dentist. I was really impressed with the cleanliness. Every time he touched something that hadn't been disinfected (like the telephone), he swapped out rubber gloves.

He shaved the peach fuzz off my upper arm and rubbed it to soften up the skin.

Then it was time for me to get in the chair. Janelle sat next to me (thank goodness) and I was really happy to see the chair had arms I could grip to keep from flinching.

I was really nervous about the pain factor, and prattled on embarrassingly about being afraid I'd cry during the procedure. Noodles told me to relax and that he'd start out with a short line so I could get used to the sensation.

Then he asked if I was ready. I said "yes." The sensation was nothing like I'd ever experienced really. The outlining felt like a vibrating, mild sting. Some people compare it to a cat-scratch, but every cat-scratch I've had burns like hell, and this didn't. I really just felt the vibration of the tattoo machine more than anything.

It took a long time to do the outlining. The design has so many intricate lines, so it took about forty-five minutes. (Janelle says I was in the chair for over an hour. I honestly don't remember ... it was such a surreal experience I lost all sense of time.)

Then he moved on to filling in the design. That actually felt kind of good. Janelle had described it as kind of like a deep-muscle massage. I think that's a great description. When I was watching Noodles work on another client, the filling-in looked like it would be the most painful. So I was really surprised that it kind of felt good. The filling-in took about 20 minutes.

Then I was done. I took a look in the mirror. It was beautiful. I was so impressed. The color is so nice and rich.

We settled up payment, Noodles gave me aftercare instructions and a tube of ointment, and we were done!

And here it is (bear in mind the photo was taken with a crappy phone-camera, please):

A big shout-out to Janelle for the moral support!