This year as a birthday present to myself, I got a Big Star tattoo. I tried to be smart about it, so I researched a couple tattoo places in the area. But because I'm crappy at being an adult, I opted for the place I could have it done at cheapest. So one day I walk into the tattoo place to make an appointment, assuming that I'll get it set up with the Hasidic-Jew-Hipster looking guy that I had talked to a week before. But I get into the shop and that guy is no where to be found. Instead there is a guy named Steve.
Steve looks like the kind of guy who is wayyyyy too old to be hanging out with the crowd that he's hanging out with, because he is. Steve looks like the actor, Ron Perlman, but if he got way too much sun and had sleeve tattoos. Every tattoo he had either had a skull attached, or some kind of demon, or some kind of demon skull. He looked like a crusty/gutter-punk who decided recently, "Enough is enough! I need to get a job. I guess I'll do my laundry one more time..." I mean his hair was shaggy, curly, AND greasy. Gross! And he was missing teeth! I'm assuming he got a couple knocked out when he was fighting other hobos for some quarters that he could use to buy his Steel Reserve.
So because I'm crappy at being an adult, I set my appointment up with Steve. Here is my reasoning- it would be funny to get my first tattoo from the sketchiest guy I have ever met. (I never thought that getting the tattoo at that place, or by him, would be unclean or unsafe or anything like that. It was a tattoo shop with licenses and reputations that they gotta up hold. Everything ended up being very clean and sterilize-y) But I thought it would be FUNNY. "Wouldn't it be funny if this homeless guy etched something permanently into my arm?" Like it would make for a good story. Like maybe one day I'll look back and say, "Man that was crazy. What was I thinking?" Only that was a predicted future. One that could have easily been changed! But I thought it would be an interesting story. "Maybe one day I'll start a blog and I'll talk about it, who knows?" Is this how most 24-year-olds with degrees think?
So I show up for my appointment. I have to fill out a form where I have to say that I don't have hepatitis or aids, and that I won't faint or anything. Steve doesn't look at this form at all. And then I fill out another form where I give Steve permission to forever alter how my upper arm looks. Then Steve starts giving me my tattoo. When I walked in the tattoo shop, they were playing Andrew WK, so I asked him if he liked Andrew WK. He said he didn't, even though he was the one that put the music on. I figure that he wasn't much of a talker, so we both remained silent for the rest of the hour that it took to get that tattoo on me. The only time he broke his silence was to yell at this fellow coworkers. What a grumpy old fart! The whole time I kept thinking- he must be thinking, "If I have to give another nerd a faggy power-pop tattoo, I'm gonna kill somebody!"
So after he finished with the tattoo, he went through a bunch of do's and don't's of how to care for the tattoo, but he clearly couldn't remember them all so he just told me to read the sheet that they give to all of their customers. Then I pay for my tattoo, and Steve walks to the back of the shop. So I stand there awkwardly for a minute before I ask another tattooist, "Is that it? Am I good to go?" And he was like, "Yeah, you should be all set." So that means Steve just walked away from me without saying, "Bye" or "Hope you enjoy your tattoo" or anything! What a jerk! He just walked away from my life forever.
So that's how I got my first tattoo. It's still healing but I probably won't be getting gangrene or anything like that any time soon. I still think, if I was more of an adult I would have went to the place that was even more boring, and had more attractive tattoo artists. Maybe next time...
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