Tattoo

Between me and death: two fistfuls of t-shirt and the friction between by knees and the buttocks of a 16-year-old boy. He is Ya's (Peter's wife) son from a previous marriage. He agreed to take me to get the tattoo since his friend knows a place. We are weaving in between tuk-tuks, trucks, and other scooters. The friend flies past us on the right and eases in front of a car as we accelerate to pass him back. I remember that I have noticed the boy walking with a limp, and Peter said it was related to a scooter accident he had a few months ago. I didn't think to grab a helmet before we left. We approach two cars, side-by-side, a space maybe three feet wide between them. He pauses as though to measure it. Then he goes for it.

Compared to this, I think, the tattoo should be easy.

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I had wanted to get a tattoo for a long time, but the hard question is not whether to get one, but of what. Then I had a dream in which I told my mom my plan. "Well," she said, "are you just going to get one of a circle?" It was odd her suggesting the idea as a question like that, in the dream. I had never thought of it before, but as soon as she said it I knew that was what I would have to do. I decided it would be on my left shoulder, maybe three inches across and half a centimeter thick.

That was years ago. Time went by and I didn't get the tattoo. When I was living in Montana, working in restaurants, I couldn't justify the cost. I planned to get it for myself as a treat when I got a little money. Also, of course, I was scared.

Then I started to wonder if I had waited too long. I couldn't remember the dream as well, and I questioned what a circle would represent. At first it seemed perfect, grandly symbolic but ambiguous enough to encompass a lifetime of meanings. Any definite symbol, like a Japanese character or a line of poetry, always seemed too confining to graft forever onto one's body. But a circle - a circle could mean everything and nothing.

Then I began to fear it would represent something all too definite: one of the bad versions of myself: pretentious, empty, attention-starved. Would it be anything more than a joke? Would it make me a joke?

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Ultimately, prosaically, it came down to peer pressure. I told Peter I was thinking about getting a tattoo while I am here. Thailand is the place to get things done - dental work, plastic surgery, wart removal. The quality is good and the prices are low. Peter told Ya and she told her son. Once that had happened it would have been very hard to get out of it.

They have a pipeline of communication that only goes one way. Peter and his wife can communicate in a Thai-English pidgin. Ya speaks to the son in Thai. The son speaks almost no English. Starting a message on this chain is like sending off a carrier pigeon. It may be some time before it arrives at the intended recipient, if it ever does, but in the meanwhile you can do nothing to stop it.

One morning, when the wife was out of town, Peter came down the stairs and asked if I was ready to get my tattoo. "Son and friend will be here in fifteen minutes. That okay?" What could I say?

Peter recommended I draw a picture of what I wanted, since of course the tattoo artist wouldn't speak English either. I realized this would be difficult. Clearly, if I was going to get the tattoo it had to be perfect, but I wasn't sure what that meant. I had a vague mental picture of what I wanted it to look like, but the picture came from a dream. I wasn't sure a tw0-dimensional drawing could be made to duplicate dream geometry. Moreover, I certainly couldn't draw a circle by hand.

At the time I was drinking tea out of a porcelain mug. It looked like the right size. I gulped the rest of the tea and wiped out the mug with a paper towel. Then I planted it upside down on my notebook and traced the outside with a pen. After removing the mug I went around the circle, filling in the line to be a little thicker. It looked about right.

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The tattoo parlor is divided into two areas: a waiting room with a table and magazines, and a tattoo area with chairs and equipment. In between the two is a small aquarium. The magazines, shelved under the aquarium, feature pictures of designs and their implementation on flesh.

I show my traced circle to the tattoo artist. At first, he either does not understand what I want, or does not want to do it. In his book of designs he has a circle with flames shooting out of it, one with a star shooting through it, but no plain circle. I cover the star with my hand. "Just the outside," I explain. He sighs and shakes his head.

I suspect he would like to sell me a more expensive tattoo. The circle with the flames does look pretty cool. For a moment I waver, but something catches and I know I have to hold firm. After a few minutes of gestured negotiations we get Ya on the phone and she talks to him in Thai. He agrees to do the circle.

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Every time I am about to get a shot at the doctor's office, I smile smugly, knowing this is the time I have finally overcome my fear of the needle. That's when the dizziness hits.

I can imagine being punctured with perfect equanimity, but somehow the needle itself does something to my body that my mind has no say over. But no matter how many times it happens, I never quite believe it. I always think next time it will not bother me. So I thought the tattoo would be no big deal.

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I at least have the sense to bring my iPod with me to the chair, clutching it like my last rations. As soon as I sit down, I start to sweat. The tattoo artist's assistant turns up the air conditioning, then brings a fan to bear on me, none of which makes any difference. I use my t-shirt, which I have taken off, to mop the sweat off my face.

He is getting the needle warmed up. It makes a buzzing sound like one of those small portable fans. My body evinces a comical range of reactions, like Elmer Fudd when he is administered to by Bugs Bunny. My hands turn mottled red, then a ghastly pale. My saliva takes on a strange sour taste. Whiteness starts to creep in at the edges of my vision. From getting shots at the doctor's office, I know the thing to do is to try to breathe deeply and evenly.

He makes two orbits around my shoulder. I remember when I was little my mom writing letters on my back with soap in the bathtub, trying to guess them. The first orbit stings a little, the second aches deeply. It would be better if they were reversed, since the pain is a helpful base from which to push against my nausea.

By the end I feel much better. I am even a little bored.

///

At the house I show the tattoo to Ya and the maids. The maids all have the expression I will find everyone has when I show them. The expression says, "That's it?"

"I had it in a dream," I explain to Ya. She translates into Thai for the maids and they all nod seriously. They accept this as a good reason.

///

The tattoo artist gives me some vaseline to protect the tattoo when I get a shower. Now I am standing in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, running my finger in circles around my shoulder. One of the reasons people use, when they try to talk you out of getting a tattoo, is What will you think when you're old? I hope, if I live that long, I'll have found better things to do than worry about a mark on my body. For now, it's too soon to say.