My husband wants a tattoo for his 33rd Birthday. Today was the day and though I got to hold his hand in the first few minutes of the process, it was B’s naptime. Maybe it was when Ryan, the tattoo artist, put on the loud, death guild music or maybe it was after B’s second attempt to find the lizard in the terrarium came up with nothing—the look on B’s frustrated little face told me it was time for us to leave. I kissed my husband, who was by now grimacing in pain, and hauled B outside. As I opened the car door, B asked through tears, “Dada? Dada go?” To which I replied, “Dada’s getting a picture on his arm.” My son picked a classic moment for his first clearly discernible “WHY?” If I were to give him the truthful version I’d say something like this: “Monkey, Dada’s having a strange man shoot ink into his arm with tiny needles. It’s called a tattoo, Honey, and it hurts a lot. This is Dada’s warped, adorable way of saying that he still really loves Mama.”
But that would be highly inappropriate, so instead I say,
“Please stop crying. We’re going home right now, baby. We’ll see Dada later. Promise.” He doesn’t like this answer, perhaps he senses that Mama is hedging. I know this because he’s bucking and screeching, his body rigid as I try to pin his arms into the car seat. It’s not pretty. We’re an event, me and my son, like one of those staged happenings by the absurdists, I think “happenings” is actually what they called them. Regardless, I can feel we’ve generated quite an audience. The guy standing at the edge of the parking lot, extensively tattooed and with massive round tribal ear wear thinks I’m a horrible mother because I can’t get my son to stop screaming. The car next to ours has a woman sitting in the driver’s seat pretending not to notice that a toddler just kicked me hard in the chin. We’re impromptu entertainment and B’s wailing could shatter glass.

There’s a statistic out there that claims over half of the American population has tattoos. I would guess very few people with the name “Edna” have tattoos. Little boys and girls don’t have or absolutely should not have tattoos. The very old and very young are pretty much out. That leaves teenagers with all manner of body artwork and sorority girls with Drew Barrymore daisies on their ankles and Goth chicks with black scrawlings on their lower backs and hippies with the Japanese symbol for peace at the nape of their neck and biker dudes with naked women on their biceps and middle aged men with random shoulder tattoos chronicling something or other that seemed momentous at the time and Vietnam Vets and Korean War guys and very old World War Two military men with solidarity tattoos. Even our friend, a wonderful, kind woman with twin babies, a woman who’s so American she loves NASCAR and fantasizes about taking her kids to Disneyland, even she has a tattoo—it’s of Mickey Mouse.

I don’t have any tattoos. I’m of the mind that the only valid reason to get a tattoo is if something truly amazing or life shatteringly horrible has happened. This vital moment merits a permanent spot on one’s body, but only if one chooses the proper location (pick your best feature and please make sure it's not an area that will see significant sagging) and the perfect artistic rendition—a difficult formula to fulfill. And this is key: Any tattoo that a woman models damn well better go with a couture Chanel gown should she ever be invited to the Oscars. Anything else is just superfluous, silly, and the makings of a huge fashion faux pas. My husband has a much more laissez faire attitude about tattoos. He has one tattoo on his left hip—a 1913 comic strip image of KrazyKat and Ignatz Mouse-- and right now, as I type this, he’s having a large rose branded into his right forearm.

My husband wanted a rose because it’s my middle name. I find this deliriously sweet.

Roses are ubiquitous in tattoo culture. They’re everywhere. Rose buds, tiny tea roses, roses with fairies popping out, roses with hearts, thorny roses, roses formed in the shape of chalices, rose vines that twist around naked women, dancing roses, roses with knives, roses with name banners, Jesus and the cross roses, overtly sexual roses with gigantic, pointed clitorises, roses with butterflies, roses with frogs, roses with Jerry Bears, roses with smirking trolls, roses with fairy princesses, Japanese anime comic book roses, skull and cross bone roses, evil looking roses done in the deepest black, and happy roses done in baby-doll pastels. I dreamt about ugly, lame, height of cliché roses for a week.

In the end, we had to get very creative and ironically, very mundane. We went with a representation not found in the forty tattoo books we scoured or the 3,000 wall drawings we scanned—a true, naturalistic rose in full bloom, drawn to scale and with such painstaking attention to detail that it looked real. I wanted it pretty, as though it were freshly picked, with the right color gradations and shadows. I wanted it feminine—because although it was going on my husband’s arm, it was supposed to symbolize me. I wanted it, in one word, perfect.

Did we reach that nearly unattainable perfection? Today was just the beginning—the rose is half-way there. Next Saturday is Corey's final sitting. I’ll have photos of both versions posted here.