Tattoos

As a little girl, I can remember getting the play tattoos in the Crackerjacks box & other places. I always loved putting tattoos on my body, but I didn't actually know anyone who had one. As I grew older, I thought tattoos were extremely sexy. I remember the moment I decided I had to get one. I was watching Mtv and the Billy Idol video for 'Dancing With Myself". When he rubbed his hand over his arm & tattoo, I was done. It was only a matter of locating a tattoo parlor (which was no easy task for a quiet girl such as myself). I also did not dare tell anyone that I wanted a tat. It was the late 80s & they weren't yet a fad. I had the perfect place. The back of my left shoulder where I would get something small. I did not want a butterfly. I had a necklace of an ankh that I bought in New Hope. I thought that would be appropriate with a black rose wrapped around it. I wanted to get it done before senior prom and only divulged my secret longing to my friend, Renee. We ended up at prom in our bare skin, but less than a year later we were both inked.

I encountered my first tattoo parlor the night I became a woman. I think I was more excited about telling Renee about the tattoo place, than that I had made a very stupid mistake. We ended up popping our tat cherries less than six months later on the same night, but not with the same tattoos. She got a bat & moon on her chest and I got my ankh w/a red rose on my back left shoulder. (Gil convinced me not to get a black rose. He made it red & promised to change it for free if I didn't like it.) Our two friends, Sik Mik & Piggy, went with us which ended up being torture rather than comfort. They convinced us it was going to be pure pain and hell. They convinced Gil to have us in raunchy positions while we were worked on. I had to straddle a chair (in a skirt) and Renee had more than ample chest exposed. (Six months later, Renee & went back for more tats. She had a brand new one & I had an add-on to mine. I believe it was just the girls that night. Gil didn't make me straddle the chair even though the additional ink was larger than the original tat. Men are pigs.)

After that I ended up getting two more tats. I don't remember when I finally told my parents. I often taunted my mom by telling her I had a tattoo on my inner thigh of an arrow with the words 'enter here'. That's what she got for calling me a whore, slut, & c*nt when I was a good girl. When I finally showed her my real tattoo, she was angry with me and gave me the silent treatment for several days. She admitted that she always wanted a daisy on her hip. I offered to take her, but she replied that she was too old. (My sister ended up getting the daisy.) Eventually, I took my dad to get his first tat which was a copy of a Frazetta piece called Lady Derringer (I believe) that he had Joe Leonard recreate so that the female was nude.

I was the first tattooed girl that people knew in college. I cut all of my t-shirts (or stretched them out) so that my tattoo would be exposed. I remember guys I barely knew caressing my tat on my back. I stopped exposing it and would make up cheezy pick up lines like, " I have a tattoo, but you have to find it." I never actually used that line. (Okay, maybe once on a late night.) I was an elementary education major and we actually had a show & tell of my tattoos (all three) in my teaching of social studies for the elementary school teacher in my junior year. That was the early nineties.

My last tats were by hand and needle in the cancer center. It was funny because all the nurses kept making a big deal out of my tattoos. They remarked their astonishment that I didn't even flinch at the needles going in my skin. Now I have several little blue love dots (as I call them) that look like freckles in a grid formation. I was going to get them covered up until I read that I need to keep them as markers in case my cancer comes back in the same breast. The radiation remained in my flesh and they would not be able to radiate the same area if another tumor formed.

I love all my tats & don't regret a single one. In fact, I think this is the year I get another one. I just haven't decided upon the design. I'm looking forward to the day I take my son to get his first one. Maybe I can convince my mom to get her first one and then I will have corrupted my whole family.

Ode to Slik Mik

In honor of my story on Shy Boys Win, I present Ode to Slik Mik which was written on the night several of us slept outside waiting to purchase tickets for The Cult/Metallica. (I never made it to the show.) For poem purpose, we changed Sik Mik to Slik Mik.

Ode to Slik Mik:

Hey babe How's about you & me
Burn some calories
Come on Baby
Don't you want some lovin'!
I wanna be your sex oven.
Come on
You know what I need
I wanna be your sex machine
I wanna hammer you
Fill you overflowing with my Love Goo!
We can do it all night
With a little help from you
It will be all right
I'll growl in your ear
Smell my breath of cigarettes & beer
If you get too near
It will send my dick into high gear
And when it gets limp
And gets itty-bitty
I can grab a beer & reach for your titty.

By: Shana, Lamit, & Renee

Sidenote: I can't remember his reaction, though I would if it was bad. He was a bouncer at the Trocadero in Philly & can be briefly seen in the 'Signs' video by Tesla. He also did things like drive his car through a wall at Byberry. For obvious reasons, I opted to drive when we hung out.

graveyards

I've always had a fascination with graveyards. I blame my great-grandmother. For fun, she used to make us go to flea markets and graveyards. Every time we visited her out in the wilds of Acme, PA, we always had to make a trip to several graveyards to visit the dead relatives. (She also let us burn stuff!) We always visited with a whole group of family so we could run & play in the graveyards. I don't get creeped out by cemeteries or gravestones.

I spent much of the summer of 1987 in hanging out in graveyards in Philly & Bucks County. I tried to take a grave rubbing course through the community college, but my mother was horrified. She would be more upset to know that I almost lost my virginity in a graveyard. I was told it was the place where Nancy Spungen was supposedly 'resting'. (I don't know if that was supposed to win me over.) Besides, it took a lot longer to talk me into the deed. In seven years, he & I never consummated the whole cemetery thing. I'm a little disappointed. In Lancaster, I completed part of my student teaching requirements in an elementary school next to a graveyard which everyone else thought was strange.

I never understood the big deal until a friend was carjacked, raped, & murdered. It changed how I thought about cemeteries. Visiting her was uncomfortable. Several of us actually snuck in and visited her gravesite on the night of the fourth of July after she was murdered. I remember that we set off fireworks and had our own little ceremony.

There aren't any good cemeteries in San Diego. The city is too new. I miss looking at old gravestones & the history involved. Personally, I'm getting cremated.

I'm speechless

I ran into an old coworker at a store. We talked about work and updated each other on our lives. She then told me that she should have a picture of me because when she thinks about me, I remind her of Mary, mother of Jesus. She stammered as she told me this. This is an older Indian (Asian) woman who is very religious and is one of the most beautiful, kind, gracious people I have ever known. I did not know what to say to this and then she started crying. I hugged her and thanked her. I just don't understand. I cannot live up to that kind of comparison. My head hurts.

Bad Hair Day

I hear it all the time. (I heard it today.) 'I know people who would kill to have curls like yours!' Personally, I would have rather gotten a perm. Six months of chemotherapy was too high a price for something that could have been done in approximately an hour or two of my time. People are so insensitive and stupid. When I hear that, I want to say, "Yes, and I almost died for those curls!" But I am far too nice and know that ignorance is bliss. I smile and shake my hair. I am supposed to be grateful that I have these corkscrew curls that no flatiron can contain. That out of my grueling cancer treatments, I now never have to worry about getting a perm. I don't mean to sound self-righteous. It just pisses me off when people expect me to be ecstatic that we only talk about my hair instead of discussing that I'm cancer-free and getting better each day. I hate that no one acknowledges the hell that I went through to survive and the fact that I am alive. Apparently, curly hair is much more important.

Hold My Hand.

I think I'm the only person in the world who fears losing weight and getting to a normal size. It terrifies me. When I'm fat, I get to be invisible and blame it for all my misfortune and lack of love interest. If I lose weight and no one wants or loves me, then it is because I'm completely and utterly unloveable. That thought causes huge anxiety attacks. Every time I have been regular size, I've been groped, grabbed, and jumped by stupid men who think it is okay to touch me. It happened when I was little and it happened all through college. I fear hetero men for the most part and befriend gay men who I know will never cross the line. I am losing weight now and the nightmares have come back. No one understands. All the old feelings come back. If I write it, then it gets out of my mind & I can push through this phase...