I am prettier now

Over the last 8 months I got two new tattoos.  They are a lot more obvious than the previous ones as they are located on my forearms, and like my previous arm tattoos they are a set.  This time the set theme is roots and wings.  Here is the first:

The blueberries are on my left arm and they represent my origins.  I have memories of picking blueberries with my family, especially when I climbed up to the rapids on the Kam river above Kakabeka Beach.  Walking across giant exposed hunks of Canadian Shield to find blueberries growing in little dips where the dirt accumulated is a powerful memory of mine, and I did this many times growing up.

We even had special machines my family built to clean and process the blueberries.  After a big berry picking session there would be coolers full of the berries to deal with, and we had specially built berry cleaning tools.  They were basically a ramp to pour the berries down with a bucket at the bottom to catch them.  Halfway down the ramp was a grate the berries would roll over, and a fan blowing through the grate would send all the sticks and leaves flying away, cleaning the berry haul.

The blueberries remind me of where I came from, the people that helped raise me, and the connection to the land and knowledge of nature that I still retain small pieces of.  It is where I came from - the family I was born into.

The other tattoo is where I chose to go.  It is an icosahedron, unfolded from a 3d shape into a 2d map on my arm.  The numbers come from a d20, a standard die used in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.  The d20 represents the games I love to play, the unfolding reflects my mathematical training.  I have told people that when I die I want it cut off my arm, folded into a die, stuffed, and put on a mantle somewhere.  Perhaps it can be rolled when a particular important skill check needs to be made, or when ogres attack.

The colours on this tattoo are a representation of the people who now surround me.  I am quite straight, unfortunately (I recognize that being queer is a struggle, but I have had a few exciting offers, and if I was bi I could have taken full advantage!) but there is a lot of queer in my house, and I wanted to have something on my body showing my support and solidarity.  In particular I wanted to send a message to Pinkie Pie that cannot be mistaken - I will put my effort and attention (and fury, should it ever come to that) into taking care of them no matter where on the rainbow they end up.

The rainbow d20 reminds me of what I have decided to do, the skills I have honed, and the family I have chosen.

Big scary man

I sometimes have daydreams or fantasies about fighting people.  They are mostly banal revenge fantasies where I beat up a group of teenagers threatening my daughter or somesuch.  I assume that such an occasion will never come to pass, and certainly it would be best if the opportunity never arose to test my mettle in such a way.

Today seemed like it might be a day where I get to find out if I can fight as well in person as I can in my imagination.  Thankfully no fighting of any sort occurred and the question of my martial capabilities is as yet unresolved.

Pinkie Pie called me up to say that her friends were being chased and harassed by a group of teenage boys from the local high school.  She and her friends needed to get somewhere, but they were worried about what would happen if the big kids found them.

An opportunity to be big and scary and yell at teenagers?  I am in!

I put on my usual outfit, which is pretty well suited to this cause.  It is a leather jacket, black leather gloves, and sturdy boots.

Also a knitted rainbow striped hat.

When I got to the elevator and looked in the mirror I realized that although the rainbow hat is a fine fashion statement usually, it really did not help me at all in the 'looking scary' department, so I stashed it my pocket.  If I really wanted to rock the scary biker man aesthetic I should invest in some facial tattooes I think, but thus far the call for that look has been lacking, so my tattooes are all under cover.

I walked the kids three blocks out and three blocks back, and absolutely nothing whatsoever happened.  We were on busy streets the entire time so even if the troublesome teenage miscreants had been about nothing would have happened, but I am glad I could set their minds at ease.  I remember being scared of other kids when I was young, so I don't mind providing moral support.

I wasn't looking for a fight.  Much as my fantasies would like to be fulfilled, real fights suck.  You can get punched in the face, and getting punched in the face sucks.  What I really wanted was a chance to go all Scary Man on some evil teenagers and make them regret harassing smaller people.  Scaring smaller people is ethically sound when it is in retaliation, right?

Right?

But no intimidation was required, just walking.

Much like the rest of parenting, there was hope for excitement, worries about danger, and then a whole lot of tedium.

I did learn to not take my rainbow hat out when my job is to be a big scary man though, so at least I am practiced up for when it happens for real.  I wouldn't want to screw that one up!

Pretty boy

Today I got my chest tattoo finished.  I was in the chair for five and a half hours, and by the end the pain was *brutal*.  The first four hours weren't bad really, the pain was real, but I was able to chat and think and everything was fine.  In that last hour there was little space in my brain for anything but coping with the pain and I was clenching the chair with one hand with all my might, twitching like crazy, and breathing hard.

It was worth it.

So pretty!

The artist did a superb job and the final product is very much what I had envisioned. 

I also learned some interesting things about where I can easily get tattooes.  Stomach isn't so bad, pecs are easy, the centre of my chest right on the sternum is rough, and the sternum right below my throat is BAD.  It felt like my whole chest was shaking and I was being choked at the same time.  Thankfully there wasn't much work up there, but wow it was not good while it was happening.

And now that I have mapped my pain reactions for my chest, I will never need to use that knowledge again.  Hurrah for learning!

I have some things to consider now.  My chest did not like being shaved and it broke out in acne substantially.  How much to blame the shaving and how much to blame the moisturizing for the tattoo... hard to say.  But some people have expressed a liking for the shaved chest look, and it definitely will show off the new tattoo to good effect, but if it means having to deal with terrible skin on my chest forever I definitely won't shave again.  I suppose I will have to wait until the entire thing is healed properly and then test and see what I want to do in that regard.

I still don't know why a flaming tree is the thing, but man, it sure is the thing.

It hurts to be beautiful

This Friday I went in to get a tattoo.  I wanted to get the same artist who did my shoulder tattoos to do this new one, but I made the decision in June last year and she was booked up for seven months.  Seven months is a long time to wait, but I was sure I wanted the same artist so waiting was the thing to do.

For no good reason I wanted a flaming tree on my chest.  People have asked if it is some kind of biblical burning bush reference (HELL NO) and also if it has some kind of significance for me (regular no).  The only kind of memory I have that relates to a burning tree is one time when my dad was burning a brush pile in our field and the fire got away from him and ended up burning down a stand of huge old pine trees.  Thankfully the stand of trees was in the middle of a field so there wasn't anything to spread the fire to.  I recall me and my brother running around with pails once the fire was mostly burned out, putting water on the smouldering bits.  I had to put him on my shoulders so we could get water onto a smoking branch that was out of my reach.

But none of that has anything to do with my tattoo, it is just a funny memory.  I don't know why I wanted a burning tree on my chest.  It just stuck in my mind once the possibility was there and made me want it desperately.

Here is the picture the artist made of what she was trying to do:

I didn't like the background stuff or the drippy effect, so it got updated to this:

And then when I decided I loved it she went to work on me.  Keep in mind that this is halfway done - the line work is complete and some filling in is done but I have another whole day in the chair filling in the rest to go:

It looks fantastic.  I gotta say, shaving my chest in preparation for the procedure was really weird though.  I have never done that before and it highlighted how my chest hair grows in all kinds of unexpected directions.  I also immediately felt like I looked wider somehow, like normal Sky pattern chest hair is slimming.

Just 9-10 hours of constant pain and way too much money, that is all it takes to make me pretty.  SO worth it.

Topless

I got a bad sunburn when I was in Hawaii, the worst one I can remember ever having.  I am all past the shedding skin phase of recovery but my shoulders are still mottled and itchy somehow, a sign of long lasting damage I assume.  Getting burnt that badly was a stupid thing to do.  So why did it happen?  Why did that mistake occur?

The first reason is simple carelessness.  I put on sunscreen three times and wore a sunshirt a bunch, but I was out in the middle of the day for six hours in a tropical climate when I was coming from Toronto winter.  I should have been way more cautious than I was.  I know that sunscreen washes off, and I was too cavalier about that.  I didn't think I was being aggressive or silly about my exposure though, I just didn't realize how bad it would be.

None of that is interesting.

The interesting part is why I wasn't wearing my sunshirt the whole time.  I paid for the damn thing and hauled it to Hawaii, surely I should have worn it the whole time, right?  It would solve this problem!

I suppose it is because I have a weird relationship with clothes, swim clothes in particular.  I hate them.

Hate!

It seems to me that when a person is going to dip themselves in water the silliest thing in the world is to cover themselves in a garment that will just need to be dried and cleaned afterwards.  Swimsuits just get in the damn way and exist because we as a society have stupid issues with genitals and breasts.  (There are times when people wear swimsuits for warmth, sun protection, or structural support, fine, but generally they are worn because of foolish taboos.)

Swimsuits are, to me, a physical manifestation of the idiocy of our collective horror at the human body's more sexual bits.  That breasts are included on that list while male nipples are not is its own foolishness which I won't belabour here.  It doesn't bother me that other people might feel like covering up when they want to swim - they are welcome to swim in a red top hat and three piece suit if they like but as long as wearing clothing to swim is mandated by law swimsuits anger me by their necessity.  Clearly I have issues with swimwear.  I hate that other people are forced to wear it, I hate that I am forced to wear it.

I like looking at people's bodies, people of all sorts.  I got tattoos because I want to trick my body out with cool pictures for the world to see, and I have been working out like crazy because I want to get big muscles and look hot.  I want to have a body that people like looking at in return, whether or not that attention is sexual.  I like being naked, and I especially like swimming naked because I love the feeling of water gliding over my body; it is like a lover's caress.  Interfering with the freedom and joy of that by binding myself up in swim clothing just feels deeply wrong.

All of this makes my sunshirt a sad thing.  So I wore it, because I did not want to burn, but I did not wear it enough.

It is odd, really, because wearing the shirt almost made me feel guilty.  Like I was betraying my principles somehow.  I was caught between the desire to not be damaged by the sun and the desire to live the life I want, joyous and free of the tyranny of clothing.  How can my brain feel guilty and wrong at wearing a stupid sunshirt but simultaneously self destructive and reckless for not doing so?  Surely there must be some way that will satisfy me entirely.

Just writing all this makes me feel strange.  I think it makes me seem vain and foolish in equal measure.  I have written many things before about the hardest moments in my life, things that I felt shame about, and yet this thing is being hard to put down.  I like the way I look now.  I still don't feel entirely right about my body, largely because when I look at myself I see my acne highlighted, marks on my body that I am sure no one else can ignore, but I do feel far better about myself overall than I ever have before.  I like the changes that pain and sweat and money and ink have wrought.  I want to be able to show that off, and yet I feel wrong for saying so, like admitting that I kind of like the way I look is a terrible thing to do.  It is as though the only ethical thing I can do is say that I don't like myself.

All five adults there in Hawaii on my trip had body image issues.  Too fat, too thin, not enough muscle, bad complexion, breasts too large or too small, etc; this is how we see ourselves.  The world would look at the five of us and think "wow, that is a pretty attractive group of adults" and yet that doesn't stop us from being down on ourselves when we look in a mirror.

Of course everyone else managed to be clever enough to avoid serious sunburn, despite any uncertainty they may have about how they look.  Perhaps they have more sense than me.

Tipping point

When I got my tattoos done a week ago I had a choice to make about money.  After swiping my card the credit machine popped up with a prompt to leave a tip for the tattoo artist.  I was surprised by this, not because I thought that you specifically don't tip tattoo artists, but simply because I hadn't thought about it at all.  The hour was late, I was tired, and the people clearly wanted to close up and go home, so I didn't have time to google 'tipping tattoo artist' and figure it out.  I ended up just tipping $40 even and hitting go.

Being me though I couldn't just leave it there.  I had to find out what the correct tip was so I would not make the same mistake twice at the very least.  It turns out that tipping tattoo artists is not so simple as tipping wait staff at restaurants - there doesn't seem to be any 15% standard agreement.  Instead I was told to tip somewhere between 5% and 35%, which is not useful.  Also the tip amount varies on whether the artist works for themselves, how much additional time they put in, and even the size of the bill.  Tipping on a % is not a useful way to express your tip if the % varies based on how long you were in the chair!

At any rate my tip only worked out to about 5% of the cost.  It seems like my artist probably gets to keep about half the take and the other half goes to the business, so she took home $450 for 4.5 hours of work.  Pretty good!

But the setup and takedown and such for my tattoos filled up the remainder of her shift, so her billing hours were really only half the hours she spent.  Plus they offer free touchups so she is definitely going to have to put in another bunch of time to fix me up perfectly after the healing is done.

Also there is the complication that tattoo artists have to pay for some of their own materials and tools, but how much is completely beyond me.

So there doesn't seem to be any real authority from which to determine a tip amount.

There also isn't any useful way for me to figure out what a 'proper' wage might be since there are so many variables and guesses.

However, my % is on the lowest end, and even though people mostly recommended tipping low % for relatively expensive work, I don't want to be the lowest.

As such I wandered back into the tattoo place a couple days ago and asked them to give the artist another $40 to double my tip.  It still isn't a lot of money, but it seems like enough to be reasonable.  They seemed pretty surprised by this.  I guess most people coming in a few days after are asking questions, panicking about healing, or complaining.  They probably don't often just show up to hand over more money voluntarily.

Anyhow I feel like my mission is accomplished.  That is, I no longer feel self conscious about my tip and it seems defensible so I will just move on and think about other things.  That is how people mostly make these sorts of decisions I imagine, though perhaps my research and consideration of the choices was an outlier.

Does this hurt?

My arms hurt.

I got tattoos yesterday on both shoulders, and while I love the tattoos themselves, the damage my body sustained is kind of annoying.  It turns out that poking one thousand tiny holes in my skin is painful.  Who knew?

People talk about how much pain is involved in getting tattoos but I wasn't at all sure what to expect for myself.  I know that getting them right on the meat of my shoulder as I am should minimize the suffering but I couldn't really translate that to what it would actually feel like.

Before I really got started somebody in the tattoo parlour fainted, which apparently is a fairly common occurrence.  That didn't fuss me any though as fainting really isn't a thing that affects me.  I don't like being poked with needles but it isn't going to knock me out.

Initially the pain was quite trivial.  No worse than the pain from running really hard or other strenuous exercise.  I didn't have the runner's high to compensate of course, but it just wasn't much of a thing.

Later it got pretty unpleasant.  I grunted and winced a lot, and by the end I really had to dissociate a fair bit to be able to ignore the pain.  I was able to read my book all right but I wouldn't have been able to think clearly or have a decent conversation.  I couldn't really tell if the increase in pain over time was due to fatigue, hunger, or a shift in the way the artist was working.  The last parts were filling in big areas which apparently hurts more but putting together the parts of the changes in pain is challenging.

At any rate it wasn't that bad.  It was a long time though - five hours actually in the chair being stabbed wears you down, even if the pain isn't really much of a problem in the beginning.  Perhaps when I get tattoos in more delicate places things will be different.  However, I can say that all those people that told me that I wouldn't be able to sit in the chair being tattooed for more than a couple hours were wrong!  Hah!

Things are kind of unpleasant today though.  My shoulders are really sore, especially when I move my arms up and bend the damaged skin.  Showering was actually quite easy but hoo boy did it sting a lot after I had gotten out and carefully dried myself off.  Sleeping was also challenging as I couldn't sleep on either side so I ended up on the couch on my back propped up with lots of cushions.  It wasn't the best.

Final conclusions about the pain:  It is annoying, for sure.  But the pain of getting a tattoo is definitely not the thing that will delay me from getting more of them.  The price holds that honour, as I certainly found it hard to swallow the cost.  Once I convince myself to spend the money, the physical suffering is a small thing in comparison.  If somebody gave me ten grand to spend getting myself tatted up I would be in the parlour an awful lot over the next few months, you can be sure of that.

I would like to axe you a question

I got my tattoos today!  It took a long time, longer than I had thought, but they are on my body and I have no regrets and they are beautiful.  I was in the tattoo parlour for almost eight hours, though not all of that was spent in the chair being poked and prodded, as the artist spent some time modifying my designs a bit to suit.

Pictures!

I got an axe on my right arm, because that is my weapon arm.  A shield on my left.  And it is a wyvern, dammit, not a dragon.  See the stinger on the tail.

I was actually pretty surprised at how good the detail managed to be on my pictures.  I wasn't really expecting to get the pictures to look so good under a close inspection but I am so pleased.  The shop was closing and my skin was starting to be very angry about the abuse so we didn't end up filling in the entirety of the shield with a grey background.  I can get it finished up later if I do end up wanting that - I can't quite decide yet what I think.  It looks good, but maybe with a steel grey it would be even better?  Hard to say.

The artist just next to the one that did these tattoos is apparently an armour specialist, and was listening to a DnD podcast while working, and loves all things fantasy.  He was talking about playing a gnome in an upcoming DnD game, and while I can't say I am behind the whole gnome thing, he sounds perfect for my next tattoo.  I want a paladin (heavily armoured warrior) on my lower back.  So I might be going back for more pain and suffering, and also more looking awesome!

I had some fantastic conversations with the artist about all kinds of things, and faced a bit of a conundrum.  She and I had a lot of things in common - we discussed science fiction novels, authors, roleplaying games, video games we loved, politics, and polyamory, which both of us are involved in.  If I had a multiple hour conversation with someone with so much in common in most contexts I would ask them out in a heartbeat, but I hesitate in doing such things when someone is at work.  For one, there are often restrictions surrounding flirting and/or dating customers at work, especially when giving out contact information could be a professional issue because of worries about poaching customers.  For two, women get hit on at work all the time and have to grin and bear it or face the consequences, and I hate that.  I don't want to be that guy.  I assume that goes double for female tattoo artists since they end up spending so much time in close proximity to clients.

(Aside:  I have never spent half a day with my hand dangling in someone's lap without somebody's clothes coming off before!)

So I ended up concluding that I had no reason to think I should actually ask her out, and good reasons not to.  It is tricky, because I dislike not doing things that could be fun for everyone because of propriety, but I really don't want to assume that a professional relationship can be more than that without some kind of unmistakable signal, and I didn't have that.

And hell, I can't complain because it was a fun few hours no matter how you slice it.

Ink

My birthday present to myself this year is a set of tattoos.  I don't have any ink on me yet so this is new territory for me but I am really excited about it.  Over the years I have talked about the many different ideas I have had for tattoos but what I am actually going with is something new.

When I first discussed this topic I wanted a die or dice on one arm and a pair of cards on the other.  Both would be located on my inner arms, high enough up that they would be concealed by a normal long sleeve shirt.  Wendy long ago forbade me from getting aces for the cards, as she was unwilling to put up with five decades of aces up my sleeves jokes.  Fair enough, that.

However, this past year I was instead thinking of getting dragons tattooed on my back, two of them intertwined from bottom to top.  The idea was that their heads would come over my shoulders and they would be breathing fire down my arms.  The idea was really cool I think, but I ended up concluding that any tattoo that couldn't be seen in one piece was a bad idea.  I don't want to have to stand there with my arms over my head so people can see my tats!

Having made an appointment last week to get a consult about my ideas I have settled on two tattoos, one on each shoulder.  They are about 10 centimetres long, and they depict a one handed battle axe on my right shoulder and a shield with a wyvern on it on my left.  I could have gone with a sword instead but my long history with axes convinced me that I should do that instead.  They are going to look something like this:

The axe will be pretty much just as you see it.  The shield is going to be a combination of the two top shields, using the outline and textured finish of the historic shield with the wyvern on it instead of the cross and gold figures.

And yes, it is a wyvern dammit, not a dragon.  It has a barbed, poison tail!

As to why a wyvern instead of the more traditional dragon or some other thing entirely... I honestly have no idea except that obviously it has be a wyvern because wyverns are awesome.  I don't think I knew just how awesome until I contemplated getting one tattooed on my body.  These things are weird.

I am a big bundle of nerves and excitement all at once.  I think it is going to look fantastic and I look forward to being newly decorated, but it is also a lot of money and so I really want it to look good.  I am not particularly obsessive over the details, as I think the artist will probably do her best to interpret what I have put together into something great and I don't think that trying to micromanage is a good idea.  I am not an artist in this way, not at all.

Once the floodgates are open I suspect I am going to want more.  I already have ideas - a fox on my stomach, because foxes are my favourite colour and they have big fluffy tails which works with my obsession with orange capes.  For my back I am currently thinking about a female warrior in heavy armour holding two swords crossed above her head.  Thing is, there are people out there who are really anti tattoo, so once I finally get some and am over the line, I might as well go whole hog.

Plus there is probably a question about tattoos on the purity test, so I can knock my score down another point.

Interestingly my search for tattoo pictures on the internet really inspired me to continue to push my exercise routine.  The great majority of people modelling tattooes on the net are absolutely cut and I want to be the same.  Getting ripped and having cool tattoos is kind of linked in my head for some reason, so aside from a probably break to let my arms recover from the tattooing, I definitely want to keep working away at getting big arms the better to display my ink.