The Six Year Tattoo

It’s taken me six years to get another tattoo.  Six years of pining for one, having ideas and then either forgetting about them or disregarding them as not being quite good enough.  But this summer something happened to me, something that changed my perspective in ways that I never could have predicted.  It caused me to look up the name of the artists that gave me my last tattoo and quickly send him an email about my idea. I wanted to add to Frida, give her another life, and I wanted it to cover the entirety of my arm.  I honestly didn’t think he would email me back, maybe that’s why I was so bold in saying that I wanted a full sleeve, but he did, and now the only thing for me to do was go through with the damn thing.

“I would love to give you a full sleeve," he wrote back.  "Do you want to maintain the Frida theme or just a tribute to Mexico?”

“Frida all the way,” I hurridly replied. I'm going to visit Frida’s house again in Mexico City, I said, I will get inspired I said next, but I trust your art, your vision.  And if you look at his portfolio you will definitely see why I have put so much trust in his artistic capabilities. It's not just how he draws with straight sure lines, it's his shading, color usage, and how he places images on the human body that brings them to life.

I did go to Frida’s house this summer and loved every moment of it.  I had been years ago and knew that this was one thing that I had to do again, however, I was a bit disappointed that some of the deeply personal letters, sketchings, photographs were no longer there, but that does happen.  Another museum commissions the art, borrows from somewhere else so that other people who may not be fortunate enough to travel to Mexico City can also enjoy it for a time, and isn’t that the way it should be anyway.   But I soon found out that a separate Frida museum will be opening in the fall.  Kahlo’s parents purchased a property right next door to the Casa Azul (the blue house and where the museum is located) and then passed the property down to Frida and her sisters.  The Museo Casa Kahlo will be more focused on Frida’s life and who she was as a person.  This makes sense, I thought.  It was the deeply personal items that I fell in love with when I visited her house the last time. 

Here I am sitting on her bench and standing in the middle of the courtyard that her house encircles.

Her studio looks like she just stepped out for a smoke.  Wet brushes chilling next to paint that is only half full.

I didn’t immediately email the tattoo artist my inspirations.  I didn’t want to appear overeager so I waited.  I waited for about a month out from my appointment. I like that things are never what they seem with Frida.  You may look at her flowy bohemian dresses and think, wow what a trailblazer of the time, but she had to wear what she did, more for her own comfort then to be a blazing fashion icon.  She had polio as a small child which caused one of her legs to be shorter than the other.  And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, when she was a teenager she was in an almost fatal bus accident where a iron handrail went through her abdomen and uterus, which caused infertility, something that I don’t think she ever got over,  and chronic pain because of the fractures sustained in her spine, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, and right leg.

She often worked lying down, an easel strapped to her neck or her chest.

In the museum there's a seperate room where some of her clothes are on display. You can see them in their deconstructed form, along with a drawing that Frida did of how she felt inside wearing such beautiful garments. 

When the day of my tattoo came, I was nervous of course.  I talked a big game.  I’m going to be full sleeve tatted girl character.  A bad ass in my own mind; someone like Frida Kahlo had to have been, someone that shouldn’t be messed with. But, what if I changed characters? The sneaky thought played sommersaults in my mind.  What would I do then?

I didn’t cancel my appointment.  I sucked all of that anxiety about what my future self would think of the present one and showed up still nervous, still shaking, and awkward as hell.

The tattoo studio or do they say parlor? Is Black Cobra in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Matt O’Baugh is who did my Frida Kahlo as a catrina and who I can’t see anyone continuing to tattoo this arm especially.  I was so impressed with his first work and I still get comments on how cool the design and execution are, even getting stopped in Mexico by a tattoo artist who couldn’t quite staring at it.

Matt presented me with the design.  I was a little shook to be honest, didn’t know how to react.  He said that we wouldn’t complete the entire sleeve today, but would start it.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but honestly it wasn’t that, it was better.  Once he placed the stencil underneath my arm and on the back of it, I began to get excited.

I do remember emailing him that I wanted to stay away from the elbow and pit area.  Well Matt like the honey badger didn’t give two fucks about my pain level and I’m really glad he didn’t.  The pit didn’t hurt near as much as the elbow.

I sat in his chair for six ½ hours and have never felt so much continuous pain in all of my life.  It felt like he was taking a burning knife and chiseling out my skin.  It felt like he was taking Shylock’s pound of flesh to feed to Hannibal Lector.

I felt the need to talk to Matt.  Say things like, I really wish the book I brought was better or do you know who David Goggins is or this is my 20th year in education, where does the time go.  To be honest, I get annoyed with mindless chitchatters and half the time I don’t want to listen to them, engage with them.  Matt, on the other hand, was drawing art onto my skin, some of which he was freelancing with a marker first, and he still managed to give me a few nods and murmured yes’.  Why I felt the need to converse?  Nerves perhaps?  I was annoying myself after awhile and then I eventually shut up, much, I’m sure, to his relief.  I let him work, and I experienced the pain.  I found that focusing on it, wallowing in it released something in me.  I looked around at all the other fellow pain seeking tattooees and loved the fact that the placement of my tattoo was one of the most painful.  I felt powerful, which is a very rare feeling for me.

We finished the first half of my sleeve and I promptly made an appointment in two weeks and then in a few days had to call the studio, I like how that sounds over parlor, and changed the appointment for November. 

All of this caused two points of anxiety in me. First, that I will be judged by my family and G’s.  Looked upon with sad eyes and gaping mouths and whispered statements of why I would do such a thing to my poor left arm.  I would himhaw my way through an explanation that I'm sure will not be satisfactory to anyone, because I rarely can say what I feel when wanting to please the person standing in front of me.  And second, that I had to postpone my appointment.  Will Matt be upset was my first thought.  Will I disrupt his artistic flow was my second.  I know I’m the customer and his prices are a hefty hit to my bank account, but I can’t help how my brain tries to make irrational thoughts seem very very rational.  Oh, and there’s a third thing.  I want to change his original design to something else and the thought of emailing him more ideas makes my heart want to shrink to the size of a marble.

I know I will follow through with my November appointment; I won’t wait another six years, I just hope from now until then my anxious mind will relax a bit although I also know that is wishful thinking.  I feel like I'm growing more anxious by the minute and maybe that’s another reason why I love getting tattoos because I relinquish creative license over myself, if that makes sense.  For that extended period of time I can't really think about anything else other than the pain of that tattoo gun burning a beautiful line into my skin and maybe that’s why they always say that tattoos can be addictive for they not only stay with you, but so does the experience for its refreshing quiet.  I will keep that in mind the next time when I feel the need to tell Matt about the breakfast I had or the misbehaving child I had to deal with or another inconsequential moment in my life because maybe he wants quiet too to think, to create.