I reach the place at the appointed hour. John, the tattoo artist, was busy drawing someone else, so I had to wait. I had been warned by a maternally protective co-worker (who is almost the age of my mother) to be prepared to meet some horrible crowd out there. But it wasn’t the crowd that was horrible, instead those hundreds of tattoo design books held some really horrible stuff ‘infants with devilish looking eyes’ –really??. A woman there thought I was too polite to which I replied feebly ‘That is because I am a tattoo virgin’.
I had a couple of designs in mind – Scorpio (my zodiac sign), a Chimera (the pen name I use), a clover (feminine design) and a compass star (for direction). I ruled out the first two because of their elaborate designs, the clover because I did not completely relate to it, so I was left with the compass star. John showed me a few designs online with a compass star and I did not like most of them. I had seen a nautical purple star in one of the design books and I decided on going ahead with it, purple being my favorite color.
When I told John where I wanted it, he said that it would be the most painful part of the body and naïve as I am, I said ‘but would you not be using some painkiller?’ and he replied in the negative. I almost passed out, I mean how stupid can I be? Not only did I assume that they would use some sort of painkiller but I also did not bother to look it up online!
Now the question arose ‘To do or not to do?’ I would have run away from that place, had it not been for my friend who said ‘Turn back only if you really don’t want a tattoo but do not turn back because you are a chicken.’ That did the trick; I decided to go ahead with it.
My friend and I went inside the saloon or whatever it is they call the place filled with weird looking things where the dyes and the needles await your skin. John made a sketch of the nautical star on my left foot (yes that is the place I wanted the tattoo) and boy! When the needle touched my skin, I almost screamed ‘Mummy, please stop, it is too painful’ and that is when the teasing started. My friend and another man who worked at the place joined forces and started teasing me for being a wimp. But I was in pain and beyond the point of caring. I openly declared that it was painful and let out a whimper now and then. After 25 minutes, I emerged out victorious, my nautical star on my feet guiding me into my future.
