A few years ago I wanted to get a tattoo on my wrist that would symbolize “trust your instinct.” Unfortunately I felt compelled to get this tattoo while I was in Idaho.
When I walked into the tattoo parlor in Boise I saw the dreadlocked owner of the store holding a baby so tiny and squishy it looked like it had just dropped out of the mini skirt of the girl standing next to him. (“So glad I didn’t wear underwear today–super easy birth.”) The owner dude looked down at the baby’s face and then handed it right back to its mother with a “gross, get that thing away from me” shudder and he told her that one of the baby’s eyes was way bigger then the other one. “And it’s freaking the shit of out me.”
He then responded to my very simple Hopi Indian design with, “Oh fuck, circles are really hard.” My instinct whispered very softly to me “THIS IS A PLACE OF EVIL…GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE,” and then it told me to wait until I was in prison to get this ink. At least there everyone is pretty much detoxed and they don’t have the morning shakes as bad as this guy had them.
It turns out he was right–circles are really hard. The circle he left on me looked all inbred and fucked up. Just like the Quasimodo baby that he tried to act like he wasn’t the father of.
And imagine my surprise when I got back to LA and discovered that the three little dots that were a part of the tattoo design were the Mexican gang symbol for Mi Vida Loca. Boy, was my face red–with the blood that was gushing from the head wound where a cholo threw a beer can at me in the 7-11 parking lot.
Even though I sort of hoped the gang symbol on my wrist would help me get a better partner at my salsa class, I knew I needed to get it removed, or at least changed into the Chinese symbol for “All Girl Babies Must Be Drowned in the River”.
The hipster LA tattoo parlor that I found magically transformed my jail tat’ into what most people refer to as “a piece of toast with a weird gang design in the middle.”
At first I’d said “No.” when the LA tattoo artist sketched out what looked to me like an old mahjong tile…but he manipulated me. When I said “I don’t really like it” he shook his head and said, “I think you’re making a mistake. It’s actually really cool.” I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t recognize cool when I saw it…so I laid back and let him do it.
When I went to pay for his work, I spotted “tattoo removal brochures” and started to ask for one–but didn’t want to be rude.
Right after it was done I sat in my car thinking of bracelets that I could wear or having my arm sawed off. As I sat sobbing, staring at the bizarre tattoo of what was starting to look like a piece of concrete toast that was now on my body for the rest of my life, I heard on the radio that one of my favorite writers and fellow Hoosier, Kurt Vonnegut, had died.
So every time someone aggressively grabs my wrists and demands to know, “What the hell is that?” I tell them it’s a piece of concrete toast that Kurt Vonnegut wrote about in some of his lesser known works. If they don’t believe me, I lie and say it was the last mahjong tile my grandmother played right before she died. If they don’t believe that, I point out the three dots that are still visible in the design–and threaten to kill them if they ask anymore questions.