Ex- anthropology student that I am, my mind is full of scarification and tooth removal rituals.

Oh, lordy, erika. For some reason, this really talks to me.

Really. Cool. I was just being honest. I wrote a whole paper once on Navajo menarche rituals, which I wish I still had.And it got cut off, so I need to fix that somehow...

Making my Mark: Why A Crip Got Ink
The first thing I notice is that nobody stares at me in the tattoo place. I’m the one looking at what’s different as my eyes follow the jungle scene on one of the artists’ forearms. Later on Homicide, when Meldrick talks about how white people mess ourselves up in the weirdest ways, he was the one I thought of. My unmarked body makes me weird here, nothing else. I could get used to that, being the normal one, the straight, Jo Ann Average.

I almost back out when I smell the alcohol...nothing good in my life ever came with that attached...I feel primal doctor fear. I almost back out again when I see the artist, with studs in his ears and “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his fingers. But they have my credit card and my John Hancock...I am as a hostage. I take comfort in two icons placed in the cube...Tony Montana in full “Say hello to my little friend!” mode, and a picture of the artist with his newborn baby and a beatific expression on his face. My kind of people.(I think the fingers are tattoo-artist humor but I can’t be sure.) He is gentle as he puts his hand on my back, and for thirty seconds I’m in love.

A man has not put his hand there for a long time. It passes and we talk about why he doesn’t do tats on “drunk idiots”. They talk too much, bleed too much, and move around too much.. The needle machine starts to work and I think I’ve learned what “feel the burn” means. I breathe into the pain like at support group, and it eases.
My chair rocks because I forgot to put the brakes on. He asks me about it because I’m the first person in a wheelchair he’s ever worked on,which makes me proud in a silly way, like when I was ten and read about the first women doctor, lawyer, tribal chief, pit boss. Partly what makes a ritual a ritual is the endurance, I think.

It takes an hour and feels both faster and slower...I selected the black bird to make a dramatic statement against my vampire-pale skin...I’m sweating in the leather pants I wore not to look like Suzie Suburb, but I think I have a rookie face...I could have spared myself the schvitz. -more- He tells me the tattoo parlor’s other branch in Utah does a very brisk business. “Those young Mormon girls,” he says, swabbing at my shoulder, “They’re just looking to rebel any way they can, while they can.” After it’s over, practically the whole place comes out to congratulate me and praise my guts for picking such a big design. It feels good, the approval of strangers, which makes me wonder how big of a statement this really is, but hey, it’s my shoulder, right? Finally something I’ve inflicted on my body with meaning, shape, boundaries, even some aesthetic.(My internal scars are still ugly)Maybe people think the pain should have brought me to my knees, even dressed as they are in my faux-Bohemian, faux-leather pants.I feel like a woman for the first time, which is big, even after having been turned into a goofy pop song. I was such a late bloomer that the physical and interpersonal changes that should have brought that feeling about were greeted with “Well, finally...” more than anything else. But this is mine. And it didn’t hurt a bit.

Oh Erika, that's lovely.

Thank you. Writing about that made me think about a lot of stuff, like that first bf wasn't really perfect, like I'd been thinking when we broke up...that I was crazy for not choosing him. Among other things.

Erika, that's really good. You should submit it to BUST.

Me too, with the submission-encouraging. I think BUST would like it.

Bust would like it, Jane might. (The magazine) Bitch, maybe?

I'm trying to think of other alt.girly pubs.

Yeah? Not too freaky? Maybe not for BUST...

erika, here's a link:

Women's magazines on the web