Okay, just kidding. It's not real. It's fake. But I am considering getting a tattoo and I wanted to see if it would totally bother me to always have something written on the inside of my arm. I see so many people nowadays who have those tattoos that are words, not images. You know, a passage from a book or a favorite saying. As a writer, this actually appeals to me. I'm not interested in having a whole paragraph from The Great Gatsby tattooed across my back or anything. (I have seen people with complete paragraphs from their favorite books tattooed across their backs. I even saw a photo of a girl who had a paragraph of writing tattooed across both her thighs. I guess her thighs had to be closed in order for it to make sense? Or maybe it was like that novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, where if you read one of her thighs, it makes sense. And if you read her other thigh, that makes sense. Yet if you put her thighs together, it creates a third thing that also makes sense!! My guess is that she didn't get that fancy, gang.)

Anyway, so I applied this fake tattoo (I've actually always been fond of fake tattoos -- it must have something to do with: a.) my reluctance to fully commit, and/or; b.) my need for constant change.) However, I didn't realize that you weren't supposed to include the English translation of the tattoo, which is written in tiny cursive just below the Asian character for  "Forever". So now I have this lovely Asian character for "Forever" applied to my arm, along with the word "Forever" printed backwards!! Okey-dokey.

Anyway. When I was fifteen and in the mental hospital, me and my room mate, this girl named K. (my first girl-lover, btw -- you won't wanna miss my upcoming memoir, gang -- seriously), decided we really, really wanted to tattoo ourselves. We stole a bottle of dark blue India ink, some sewing needles and some thread from the Art Therapy building, hid them in our room and proceeded to tattoo ourselves the old-fashioned, incredibly non-sterile way. We had chosen the Blue Oyster Cult symbol, which is pictured below. I have no memory of what it means now, but it meant something spiritual and cool back then (1975):



Since K. and I were always intensely horny every moment of the waking day and beyond, we of course were going to tattoo ourselves  down there close to our mounds  -- just slightly to the right. So the illicit tattooing began. And guess what? This REALLY fucking hurts. I got 2 dots in me (which are still there) and gave up b/c the pain was excruciating and I was doing it to myself, you know? So easy to just stop. But K. did not stop. She did the entire tattoo and it got infected something AWFUL and so she got caught, not only by the hospital staff, but they told her MOM who was absolutely fucking furious... (Trust me; NOBODY but sailors, prisoners, & sex fetishists got tattoos in those days -- and certainly not underaged suburban white girls.)

Anyway, K. regretted the tattoo and yet, there it was, permanent -- "forever", as the Asian characters would say. So I learned my lesson through her: tattoos are permanent and you will live to regret them. Obviously, 35 years later, most of the entire world disagrees with me on that score. It's the permanence of them that they embrace. In fact, it seems as though nowadays young people are expected to get tattoos -- when they fall in love, or when someone in their family dies, or when some sort of milestone is achieved & they want to honor it forever.

Well, yesterday morning, I awoke with this feeling of absolute certainty that I wanted a very specific phrase tattooed on myself. In honor of my having let go of something enormously huge recently and committing myself instead to something even more enormously huger. (I'm always trying to figure out how to stay alive in my life until I die -- a constant  & inspiring challenge, gang.) But I didn't want this tattoo to interfere with my jewelry, or my lovely party dresses, or the canvas of incredibly beautiful skin that is me when I'm naked, so I kept trying to figure out where this little phrase could unobtrusively go. I'm testing out the inside of my lower left arm -- the arm closest to my heart, as it were!

We shall see if I do indeed get tired of it. I'll keep you posted.